I just finished reading a book called Move a Little, Lose a Lot.
The argument of the book is that diets and even systematic exercise have been ineffective in curing the American obesity epidemic. Lots of people continue to put on extra pounds and constantly feel tired, depressed, alienated from their jobs and lives.
If there is one simple answer to this complex problem, author Dr James Levine argues, it is that we aren't moving enough for our emotional, mental and physical well-being. He talks about how the typical person a century or more ago would have been active during the day -- not necessarily doing strenuous physical labor, but on their feet and moving around. In contrast, nowadays, many people drive their car almost to the door of their workplace, ride an elevator to their office, sit for 9-11 hours of work, and then head home to sit in front of the TV for a few more hours before they go to sleep.
Levine emphasizes that most people who start an exercise program give it up quickly because (1) they can't find the time for it (2) they are too out of shape to feel good when they start exercising vigorously -- it actually causes a drop in their sense of well-being.
His solution: start moving more in everyday life. He points to research that shows that you don't have to sweat and have an elevated heart-rate for exercise to make a big difference in your weight and energy level. He mentions a lot of people who were able to drop pounds and clothes sizes without making any changes except for moving more.
One of the mysteries of weight loss research is that obese people really often do eat less than thin people. And sometimes the thin people are just as sedentary as the obese people -- they don't have a formal exercise program. But Levine found that the thinner people tended to do more of what he calls NEAT -- which stands for Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis.
I remember noticing this in college -- how a friend of mine who was slightly overweight tended to conserve her energy, whereas I tended to move a lot more just during the course of daily life. My mother in law has this down to an art form -- everything in her day is activity-oriented. Even when she is watching TV or reading email, she's often jumping up to do some little thing she remembered, or refill her coffee, or look out the window at the bird feeder.
My own mother, who also remained slender throughout life, is of a quieter temperament, but she gardens, hangs up clothes on the clothesline rather than machine-drying, takes the dog for a walk twice a day, and that kind of thing.
Levine says that this kind of thing is the very type of thing that "energy-conservers" don't do naturally. But they can learn to retrain their habits, and they often find that staying active on this mild level reduces their stress and depression and boredom, and helps them take more charge of their lives.
I didn't really expect to like this book much. It looked sort of gimmicky on the face of it, in that "New Research Shows!!" sort of way. And I doubt if the idea accounts completely for all our health and weight problems in the US. However, it is sensible and I think that even aside from weight issues, the advice to keep yourself active during the course of daily life is good.
The second part of the book is a week by week plan for changing your habits one step at a time. If you followed it, you would end up by working quite a few healthy changes into your life without, and this is key, having to put aside a huge chunk of time for exercising, changing clothes, showering and all that type of thing.
I don't know if the exercise level he suggests is sufficient to get your heart-rate at target and put you into aerobic health. But it would certainly be way better than nothing. And as he points out, once you get the habit of movement, a lot of other things follow -- you generally feel more positive about activity, you might be more inclined to get involved in interesting activities that would fill up the empty time you spend eating in front of the TV, and so on.
One suggestion he makes which anybody could do right away is to make a chart of how you spend your day (in half hour increments) and then mark the activities red for sedentary, yellow for standing, and green for moving. Then try to figure out how to move the reds to yellow or green.
So if you watch TV for 2 hours a day, by setting up the treadmill and walking at a very easy pace (1 mile per hour!!) you can switch the red to a green. Plus, during that time, if you are walking, you are probably not snacking on insulin-busting junk food.
If you spend a lot of time on the computer, he recommends getting an under-desk cycle or putting the computer on a stand next to your stairmaster or treadmill. If this sounds painful remember that he is not talking about getting breathless and sweaty, but just a very light level of movement.
Personally I've been doing almost all my reading on the stationary bike (and sometimes watching movies with my family). If I could figure out a way to do this while on my computer I would be set.
When I'm talking on the phone I'm often pacing or stepping up and down on the mini-trampoline, or sometimes scrubbing the baseboards or cupboard doors, which are also "green" activities.
One woman says she tried to make everything she did "less energy efficient" which sounds funny but makes sense because in some ways our modern problem is maximum convenience in everything. We don't even have to chop vegetables in order to eat, or get out of the car to buy a meal.
This all seemed to accord with what I've read elsewhere and seen in my actual life. I liked the way "weight loss" was de-emphasized in favor of just living healthier. Many of the people mentioned in the book lost weight without making any other changes, but the weight loss wasn't the biggest change they noticed -- they noticed a more positive attitude, more energy, and less stress. So the weight loss was just one part of a bigger change.
Showing posts with label holos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holos. Show all posts
Friday, June 24, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your LIfe
A couple of months I read several books about ADHD and organization. Though I am probably not diagnosable ADD, books about organization and ADD work better for me than ordinary organization books because they deal with issues at a more specific level than ordinary organization books do. .
At least some of them do. Some of them still fall into the trap of basically saying "How do you get organized? Get organized!" (that is, arrange your folders alphabetically, or whatever). This doesn't quite get to the heart of MY problem because it seems to interfere at a lower level than that. Something like "get color-coded folders and organize your incoming papers by topic" can sound like "go climb Mount Everest" to someone with ADD. It is multi-step, involves some emotional strain and sounds arduous without much natural reward, which are all things that are difficult for an ADD-type person to deal with.
An ADD-type person isn't necessarily disorganized. Rather, his brain is set up to receive information in a non-linear/sequential way. Often there are difficulties with processing, so the brain "hangs" during critical moments rather than engaging. It's like one of the older computers you may have around the house that has plenty of storage room but not a very powerful processing system so it slows down to a crawl when called on to do more challenging things. So it's not organization that's lacking, so much as spatial/temporal retrieval and processing.
The book I found most helpful of the several I read was called ADD--Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life. The title describes its format pretty well. Every chapter deals with a particular problem of ADD-type people. It opens with a few stories of people who have that kind of problem -- for example, with the issue of getting out of the house in the morning on time, it describes a young business type who is sort of classic ADD and loves doing several things at the same time and sort of enjoys the tension of getting to the office just under the wire. It also tells about a mother of several who found her family was always frantically looking for things at the last minute and piling into the car without having eaten breakfast.
Then each chapter offers various specific solutions. I don't remember the solutions for the young executive because I'm not so much a risk-taker type, but for the mother, it was suggested that she start a simple breakfast, lunch and dinner routine -- SIMPLE being the operative word, and "convenient" being the other imperative. In her family's case they relied quite a bit on prepackaged healthy snacks that you could just grab and go. Another suggestion was to have a drop and pick-up basket by the door -- where you put your keys and cell phone and backpacks and whatever you will need to walk out the door with.
Probably most people do these things naturally but they are exactly the sort of middle-level solutions that I have trouble with. Though I've made progress over time by necessity! I only have to hunt for keys once a month rather than twice a week now, and the hunt is limited to 3 or 4 possible places rather than all over the hosue!
Each chapter contains three "levels" of solutions-- things you can do by yourself, and things you can get help from your family or friends, or your professional adviser (whether that is an ADD coach or whatever). I mostly focused on the self-help sections.
The book seems to hit the target with common difficulties for ADD-type people -- like hyperfocusing and letting other things slide, procrastination, tendency to have floods of ideas at the same time so it's almost impossible to keep focused on what you are doing, difficulty in retrieval both mentally and physically, so that you can never find the right thing at the right time. Also making decisions, having trouble thinking through things ahead of time so you end up behaving impulsively, and not being able to learn well from consequences, so you repeat the same mistakes over and over. These things are not lack of organization strictly speaking, but they lead to lack of organization. But they have to be coped with upon the level that they exist.
One thing I've found especially helpful is what the book calls the Stubby To-Do List. For this, you are supposed to take a smallish pad of paper and a sharpie, preferably in a bright color, and in the morning write down no more than 5 things you really want to get to that day. You don't have to pay attention to priority or anything, just list them as they come. They are things you don't already do by habit, things that would tend to slip out of your mind without the reminder.
Then you keep the list in a handy place where it's easily visible and refer to it. If something doesn't get done you simply put it on the next day's list. But if it keeps not getting done, that is a clue that it might have to be broken up into smaller sections or that you might have missed a step. For example, if I write "call Aidan's insurance company" and find it sliding for more than one day, perhaps I have some ambivalence or I have to figure out what to say more carefully or I need to have the phone number ready at hand. It's silly, but these little blocks seem to cause problems in getting things done for me.
Some ADD coaches recommend writing a 3-item list and working hour by hour instead of day by day. That's probably for people with very busy jobs or lives. For me, the 5-item daily list works better because it's so simple. I don't usually use a bright Sharpie, either -- I can see that it's supposed to activate your brain but my brain gets irritable when faced by large bright bold writing. So I just use an ordinary pen.
This short to-do list is distinct from having a regular calendar to write down appointments. Though sometimes if I am going to an appointment and need to drop something off at the Post Office on the way, I will write that down. It's also distinct from your ordinary daily routine, though when I'm trying to add something new to my routine I sometimes write it down on the to-do list for a few days until I don't need the reminder anymore.
It seems to really work because when I stopped doing it for a couple of weeks I started letting things slide again. I hate it when my husband or kids have to keep reminding me about something, especially when it then slides right back out of my mind. So this gives me a way to address that issue.
After you're done with all the items, you throw away that page and start a clean one. Simple!
I recommend the book if you find that ordinary organization books seem to bog you down with just another layer of things to remember. It's practical and simply laid out and doesn't go into much detail about the inner workings of your brain -- it's all about trouble-shooting and finding solutions for common ADD-related problems.
At least some of them do. Some of them still fall into the trap of basically saying "How do you get organized? Get organized!" (that is, arrange your folders alphabetically, or whatever). This doesn't quite get to the heart of MY problem because it seems to interfere at a lower level than that. Something like "get color-coded folders and organize your incoming papers by topic" can sound like "go climb Mount Everest" to someone with ADD. It is multi-step, involves some emotional strain and sounds arduous without much natural reward, which are all things that are difficult for an ADD-type person to deal with.
An ADD-type person isn't necessarily disorganized. Rather, his brain is set up to receive information in a non-linear/sequential way. Often there are difficulties with processing, so the brain "hangs" during critical moments rather than engaging. It's like one of the older computers you may have around the house that has plenty of storage room but not a very powerful processing system so it slows down to a crawl when called on to do more challenging things. So it's not organization that's lacking, so much as spatial/temporal retrieval and processing.
The book I found most helpful of the several I read was called ADD--Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life. The title describes its format pretty well. Every chapter deals with a particular problem of ADD-type people. It opens with a few stories of people who have that kind of problem -- for example, with the issue of getting out of the house in the morning on time, it describes a young business type who is sort of classic ADD and loves doing several things at the same time and sort of enjoys the tension of getting to the office just under the wire. It also tells about a mother of several who found her family was always frantically looking for things at the last minute and piling into the car without having eaten breakfast.
Then each chapter offers various specific solutions. I don't remember the solutions for the young executive because I'm not so much a risk-taker type, but for the mother, it was suggested that she start a simple breakfast, lunch and dinner routine -- SIMPLE being the operative word, and "convenient" being the other imperative. In her family's case they relied quite a bit on prepackaged healthy snacks that you could just grab and go. Another suggestion was to have a drop and pick-up basket by the door -- where you put your keys and cell phone and backpacks and whatever you will need to walk out the door with.
Probably most people do these things naturally but they are exactly the sort of middle-level solutions that I have trouble with. Though I've made progress over time by necessity! I only have to hunt for keys once a month rather than twice a week now, and the hunt is limited to 3 or 4 possible places rather than all over the hosue!
Each chapter contains three "levels" of solutions-- things you can do by yourself, and things you can get help from your family or friends, or your professional adviser (whether that is an ADD coach or whatever). I mostly focused on the self-help sections.
The book seems to hit the target with common difficulties for ADD-type people -- like hyperfocusing and letting other things slide, procrastination, tendency to have floods of ideas at the same time so it's almost impossible to keep focused on what you are doing, difficulty in retrieval both mentally and physically, so that you can never find the right thing at the right time. Also making decisions, having trouble thinking through things ahead of time so you end up behaving impulsively, and not being able to learn well from consequences, so you repeat the same mistakes over and over. These things are not lack of organization strictly speaking, but they lead to lack of organization. But they have to be coped with upon the level that they exist.
One thing I've found especially helpful is what the book calls the Stubby To-Do List. For this, you are supposed to take a smallish pad of paper and a sharpie, preferably in a bright color, and in the morning write down no more than 5 things you really want to get to that day. You don't have to pay attention to priority or anything, just list them as they come. They are things you don't already do by habit, things that would tend to slip out of your mind without the reminder.
Then you keep the list in a handy place where it's easily visible and refer to it. If something doesn't get done you simply put it on the next day's list. But if it keeps not getting done, that is a clue that it might have to be broken up into smaller sections or that you might have missed a step. For example, if I write "call Aidan's insurance company" and find it sliding for more than one day, perhaps I have some ambivalence or I have to figure out what to say more carefully or I need to have the phone number ready at hand. It's silly, but these little blocks seem to cause problems in getting things done for me.
Some ADD coaches recommend writing a 3-item list and working hour by hour instead of day by day. That's probably for people with very busy jobs or lives. For me, the 5-item daily list works better because it's so simple. I don't usually use a bright Sharpie, either -- I can see that it's supposed to activate your brain but my brain gets irritable when faced by large bright bold writing. So I just use an ordinary pen.
This short to-do list is distinct from having a regular calendar to write down appointments. Though sometimes if I am going to an appointment and need to drop something off at the Post Office on the way, I will write that down. It's also distinct from your ordinary daily routine, though when I'm trying to add something new to my routine I sometimes write it down on the to-do list for a few days until I don't need the reminder anymore.
It seems to really work because when I stopped doing it for a couple of weeks I started letting things slide again. I hate it when my husband or kids have to keep reminding me about something, especially when it then slides right back out of my mind. So this gives me a way to address that issue.
After you're done with all the items, you throw away that page and start a clean one. Simple!
I recommend the book if you find that ordinary organization books seem to bog you down with just another layer of things to remember. It's practical and simply laid out and doesn't go into much detail about the inner workings of your brain -- it's all about trouble-shooting and finding solutions for common ADD-related problems.
Friday, June 10, 2011
All the King's Esquires
Why am I thinking about this? I think because I decided that Friday was to be Fitness Friday but when I really think about it, fitness comes from the inside. I don't mean that you can just sit around thinking and you will be fit, or that to be physically fit requires psychoanalysis or navel-gazing. In fact, I think that I usually make behavior changes most effectively when I actually try to change the behavior (duh, right?), not when I sit around thinking about it!
However, in my experience I don't resolve on changes and actually work them into my life until I've gotten all the interior "troops" rallied on my side. Some of them may not entirely jump for joy -- there are parts of my interior that don't really want to stick to a somewhat arbitrary schedule and goals. But I do way better if those forces are at least willing to go along. There's a part of my intellect that tries to trump the more balky, non-verbal part. But will is "intellectual APPETITE". I have to have my inner self on-board with what my reason tells me to do, or somehow I will be sabotaged in what I try to do.
What this adds up to in real life is that when I want to do something -- make a change -- there is probably something resisting, or I wouldn't have to make the change in the first place. For example, I already eat when I'm hungry. I don't seem to have anything that blocks me from going into the kitchen and grabbing myself some food. There are other things that come relatively easily to me. I don't have to struggle with myself to go to Mass every week. I have built up a habit at this point. Aristotle says that good habits are things done with ease and fluency from repeated practice. Habitus resides inside and is the fluency in doing the thing -- for example, even when I am not actually reading or writing, I have a facility in reading and writing, so I have a "habit". And there are no real blocks in me that resist reading and writing (don't ask about the difficulty in pulling away from reading and writing, sometimes).
Suppose now that I have writer's block. Perhaps I have the ability to write fluently, I once wrote freely, but for some reason, something inside is resisting. So I don't write. It feels like I "can't" write, even though I retain the mechanical ability to write and the communicative skills I had previously. But something is blocking me.
When that happens, what I experience is that the interior forces aren't rallied. There are times when it works to just force your way past the resistance. I think this works better if you are choleric or if you are undertaking a relatively mechanical project. Plato said
..a freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.Whenever we are talking about development of true virtue in habit, we are talking about something to do with the mind, because traditionally, virtue has been thought of as something to do with our rational nature. In that way, it seems somewhat comparable to knowledge to me. The etymology of virtue derives from "man" and secondarily, "strength". Our strength is a human strength and will be by definition intellectual, as we are. Animals aren't virtuous -- they seek goodness by instinct, without having to deliberate. Our flying squirrels have an indescribable kind of natural wholesomeness. They don't find themselves in moral dilemmas -- they work unreflectively towards self-preservation, the good of their species, and indirectly towards the good of the natural ecology (by providing food for predators, etc). It's good, but it is categorically different from the goodness of humans. Chesterton says we tell a man "Be a man!" but we don't tell a crocodile "Be a crocodile!"
So to try to pull this together -- when I'm trying to really change, it is a decision made by my soul, whatever is in me that takes all the different sensations, impulses and thoughts and pulls them together into right action.
Perhaps by now, when I'm talking about different "voices" or aspects of myself at war, it sounds like I am Gollum/Smeagol or something. My preciouss.... we don't like nasty fitnessss programsss, does we! That could be the case, but I think it probably goes beyond split personalities into a real part of human nature that we try to find language for that ends up being analogical and limited, since after all there is an immaterial aspect that can only be described by analogy. Freud talks about subconscious, id and superego. This seems to have some symbolic plausibility to it but in my opinion the analogy has become biased towards error by the way he and others used it. Nowadays psychologists talk about right-brain (non-verbal, visual/spatial, emotional, big-picture) and left-brain (linear/sequential, verbal and analytical). This is more neutral terminology, but still doesn't seem to sum it up since, as my friend said, there still seems to be a "me" who receives the input from the hemispheres (or whatever) and decides what to do with it. Or you could talk about the Felix and Oscar sides of your personality. But basically, there are messages coming from different parts of yourself and you want to integrate them effectively and "humanely", meaning that you want to treat yourself like a human being made in the image of God, not like a child or slave or pig.
Personally when it comes to analogies I rather like Charlotte Mason's "parable of the Mansoul" because it acknowledges that it is a parable, which gives you more freedom not to let the allegory pull your thinking off course or bring in a lot of extra baggage, which is what I don't like about Freud or even the left-brain/right-brain concept. You could end up with a reductionist concept with those, because you don't have a real self acknowledged explicitly in that terminology. With a frankly poetic analogy you are freed to acknowledge mystery and the vast amount we don't yet know about human psychology.
I admit I didn't like the analogy of an interior kingdom very much at first reading quite a few years ago-- it sounded strained and fanciful to me and I was hungry for science and simplicity -- but the more I think about it, the more I realize why Charlotte Mason explained it this way.
So the basic point is that I am realizing now that "fitness" incorporates more than just a toned body. Plato says that forced exercise does no harm to the body. Those who are basically fit and qualify for military training can go through boot camp and it improves their fitness. However, not all those who have gone through boot camp stay fit for their whole lives. Some do, and others don't. So I'm judging that to be truly fit you have to have an interior state that works outward towards your body. The exercise alone only does it as long as someone is making you exercise.
When I first started trying to exercise regularly again, a few years ago, I hated to exercise. I would plan to do it and just not do it. When I examined WHY I realized that (1) I didn't REALLY think it was a top priority compared to cuddling my babies, getting the house fairly clean, and having time to read and write. Those were top priorities. And (2) I was intimidated by the idea of having to exercise 45 minutes a day, which was what I had read was the minimum. Also, I didn't want to sweat because I have eczema and my sweat aggravates it, and I thought you had to get breathless in order to have an effective workout, and I got anxious when I was out of breath. So I didn't exercise regularly. I regularly planned to, and sometimes started, but I never kept it up.
What changed: (1) I didn't have babies anymore and (2) I researched and found out the absolute minimum that would help me avoid health problems in later life (3) I was getting older and to the age where health problems can be caused by lack of fitness. I also found that you didn't have to sweat copiously or be breathless for a long time in order to get sufficient exercise, that in fact being breathless means you are building up lactic acid and not getting aerobic conditioning, and that 20 X 5 minutes per week was enough to make a difference.
When my interior Prime Minister was able to listen to the interior Lords and Esquires and hear their counsel and make thoughtful decisions accordingly (much as St Benedict describes in his rule in regard to the abbott taking counsel with the monks, and even listening to the most junior of them) then I could actually make some changes rather than just wishing to and beating myself up because I couldn't. I regret not having the babies around. I think if I was back in the baby years I still would probably put formal exercise in a lower priority bracket than the other things, because I don't regret reading and writing and cuddling. Maybe I would put the little person in a sling and walk the floor for 20 minutes though, now that I know that is enough to do some good! Different people might make different decisions in this regard, and that seems like proper administration of our individual interior Kingdoms -- decisions are worked out in a unique context, what is great for Switzerland might not be the best for Japan.
The King over the Prime Minister, of course, is God -- or perhaps we are the Regents in our souls and He is the Emperor as CS Lewis would have it. Anyway, He's the one who is ultimately in command, and I am responsible to Him. But He seems to let me have a lot of discretion -- I think He wants me to invest my whole self in serving Him, not just follow a checklist. He does provide guidance and has given me Laws which are non-negotiable, but this is to preserve the interior kingdom from fire, flood, plague, famine and enemy invasion, as Charlotte Mason says.
So there, now I have gotten out what I am thinking about with regard to fitness. The Greeks called the mind/body healthy composite "holos" which implies integrity, thinking of the body/soul/mind as all working together rather than warring and competing. That seems like quite a good thing to work towards and pray for. A priest once remarked in his homily that the Hebrew word "Shalom" has a similar meaning and when we say "Peace be with you" at Mass, we are wishing this wholeness on each other. So considering all that, though I want to be physically fit and healthy, this is really only desirable to me in the context of everything working together as a unified whole!
Monday, June 6, 2011
Monday Home Management
All last week it alternated between cold, sort of bright days and cold, rainy or hailing days. Last night there was a grand thunderstorm and our roof got pelted with hail. I guess I was over optimistic when I planted my tomatoes.
The Homeschool
My husband and older children were all gone last week visiting Liam in Oregon, so I was alone with the three younger boys. We ended up more or less taking a week off. My 15 year old still did minimal school -- he is finishing a couple of courses from Homeschool Connections, one on the Odyssey and a Latin one. And he has several books he is working through:
So it's pretty lowkey right now. Paddy is only doing piano. Aidan has been doing lots of floor puzzles recently and is getting really good at them. I guess this is Memorial Week. I had hoped to do some planning for next year but only worked on that a little bit. Maybe this week.
The House
After I did all that cleaning in the spring, I haven't done very much at all in the past week, and it's showing. One thing I learned from Speed Cleaning that really helps me is to work in a circle. You can do this with every room, or as I have been doing it, you start somewhere in the house and then progress in a big circle from there. For some reason this really helps me orient myself -- I have trouble with that first step in every project. I used to think it was laziness and maybe that is part of it, but now I think it is partly an executive function problem. I can visualize the whole thing and feel motivated to do it, but I have trouble figuring out where the rubber meets the road. Once I get started though, I'm usually fine and then the problem is to keep from overdoing it -- that is, cleaning the whole house while everything else drops!
I may have mentioned this already but my daughter got rid of two big bags of clothes and I got rid of another bag plus a bunch of K12 books (shipping back the non-consumables, discarding the used workbooks) so according to my sidebar I'm up to 100 bags. Though it seems like I hit that total earlier so I will have to go back in the archives and double check!
The Kitchen
When Clare came home from college, she brought a friend, and I had so much fun making somewhat more elegant meals than usual. Notice I qualified elegant. No chef-level cooking around here, but I paid more attention to complete effect and presentation. I made roasted broccoli, and sweet potato spicy fries, and other things I hadn't tried before. And it was SO MUCH FUN, though rather exhausting, probably because I'm not used to it. For the first time in my life, perhaps, I realized why some people cook as a stress buster and as a creative outlet.
However, this week, with two kids who like simple American style food and one who likes the vegetable -leftover stirfries I make for myself, we kept it extremely simple. It was all about homemade pizza and storebought chicken tenders and pancakes-for-dinner, and tuna pasta casserole. That kind of thing.
This summer, if we ever do have a summer, I want to keep trying the Fun Kind of Cooking I so briefly experienced.
Health and Fitness
I am trying to avoid weighing myself more than once a week. In about 3 weeks I've lost three pounds. But I think it's better than that because I have been riding the stationary bike every day. I allow myself to read fun books during this time, which ends up being non-fiction about education, psychology or other similar things. Furthermore, I'm allowed to quick-read, in Mortimer Adler's inspectional style, and then if the book is a good one I can go back and read it again more carefully. So it's easy to keep cycling as I get caught up in the book. I have been setting my bike to the calorie setting and I usually cycle about 500 calories a day, which takes about 2 hours, but it's fun.
For all of last year I could rarely cycle more than 20 minutes. In the past I would have felt discouraged about not really progressing, but approaching age 50 is a wake-up call and I knew 20 minutes was the minimum so I just congratulated myself on keeping up with that minimum. But suddenly I did this jump into a much higher level. So the take-away lesson for me is to keep persevering with what I can do and be patient, not expect an amazing change right away.
Recent Reading Mileage
These are a few of the books I've been reading as I ride the bike.
Forever Lily. A story of a woman who went to China to support a friend who was adopting a baby, and ended up adopting the baby herself. The main story was interesting, but it had a strange italicized dream story about an ancient Chinese empress who gives birth out of wedlock and loses the baby -- so the modern story was supposed to be a kind of reincarnation of the old story. Certainly it kept my attention but it would not be my first pick for a resource if you want to learn more about international adoption.
Free Range Kids.: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Kids Without Going Nuts with Worry I guess some people don't much like her humorous writing style -- she sounds sort of like a 21st century Erma Bombeck to me. Personally, I laughed at the funny parts. The basic thesis is that America is actually as safe nowadays as it was in the 70's when most of us were allowed to ride our bikes all over town, take the city bus, and explore the woods by the hour without even a cell phone. She doesn't recommend skipping the car seatbelts or the bicycle helmets or sending your children to walk through the inner city at night, but she does think that because of media influence and parental peer pressure we have become much more paranoid than is good for us or for the optimal development of our kids. I enjoyed the book.
Cutting Myself in Half: How I Lost 150 Pounds One Byte at a Time. Fun read. It is written by a very bright teenage boy who used to weigh almost 300 pounds. By exercising and watching his calorie intake he managed to get himself wonderfully fit and lean and even got asked to carry the Olympic torch during one stage of the relay. Since he loved video games he structured his weight loss efforts like a game, allowing himself a calorie "budget" and thinking of weight -traps as obstacles in the game. He tells about how he thinks life stresses like his parents' divorce turned him from an ordinary chubby kid into a morbidly obese teenager, and how a YMCA membership and some support from a trainer there started the changes that revolutionized his life. He offers a plan for the teenager that wants to lose weight that is sensible and not gimmicky or dangerous. It would probably be a good book for a teenage boy that wanted the inspiration and some tips to lose excess weight. (my boy of that age is trying to gain some weight -- he's about the same size as the boy in the book got when he lost enough weight, but he wants to bulk up at least 10 or 15 more pounds since he's a football player).
Why We Run: A Natural History
This is a book by Bernd Heimlich, a good natural history writer who was born in Germany and emigrated to the US with his parents, who are also natural historian. It turns out he is also a competitive long distance runner who ran in high school and college, dropped it for years, and picked it up when he was 40. Good inspiration for my exercise efforts. He talks about how different types of animals run and applies some of that perspective to how people function as runners.
Just a Phone Call Away: Secrets of a Master Networker
I didn't read all of this book, because it's really about networking in your business, but I read the parts that seemed to apply more to everyday life. His idea is that getting to know people, networking, helps you succeed in business and in life. He doesn't promote networking to "use" people or do the hard sell on them, so much as he believes that networking is beneficial for everyone. He likes to do favors for people by getting them in touch with each other even if it doesn't directly benefit his own interests. So he has sort of a win/win, synergistic approach to the concept of networking. The second part of the book was about forming a networking club and I wasn't too much interested in that but I did like his approach to getting to know lots of people. Incidentally, I think a lot of women do this intuitively from what I've seen. They are in touch with lots of different folks and do more than their fair share of keeping the community connected. Our real estate agent is also a natural at networking -- I love listening to him talk, he gives out information about the community like a gift -- it is not gossiping because it has a positive function in helping people know who other people are and what they are engaged in.
Well, I'm off now to vacuum and play with my 8 year old and then make dinner!
The Homeschool
My husband and older children were all gone last week visiting Liam in Oregon, so I was alone with the three younger boys. We ended up more or less taking a week off. My 15 year old still did minimal school -- he is finishing a couple of courses from Homeschool Connections, one on the Odyssey and a Latin one. And he has several books he is working through:
- The Odyseey
- James Herriot's All Things Bright and Beautiful
- Readings in Ancient History: Rome and the West
- The Founding of Christendom
- Historical Tales: The Romans
So it's pretty lowkey right now. Paddy is only doing piano. Aidan has been doing lots of floor puzzles recently and is getting really good at them. I guess this is Memorial Week. I had hoped to do some planning for next year but only worked on that a little bit. Maybe this week.
The House
After I did all that cleaning in the spring, I haven't done very much at all in the past week, and it's showing. One thing I learned from Speed Cleaning that really helps me is to work in a circle. You can do this with every room, or as I have been doing it, you start somewhere in the house and then progress in a big circle from there. For some reason this really helps me orient myself -- I have trouble with that first step in every project. I used to think it was laziness and maybe that is part of it, but now I think it is partly an executive function problem. I can visualize the whole thing and feel motivated to do it, but I have trouble figuring out where the rubber meets the road. Once I get started though, I'm usually fine and then the problem is to keep from overdoing it -- that is, cleaning the whole house while everything else drops!
I may have mentioned this already but my daughter got rid of two big bags of clothes and I got rid of another bag plus a bunch of K12 books (shipping back the non-consumables, discarding the used workbooks) so according to my sidebar I'm up to 100 bags. Though it seems like I hit that total earlier so I will have to go back in the archives and double check!
The Kitchen
When Clare came home from college, she brought a friend, and I had so much fun making somewhat more elegant meals than usual. Notice I qualified elegant. No chef-level cooking around here, but I paid more attention to complete effect and presentation. I made roasted broccoli, and sweet potato spicy fries, and other things I hadn't tried before. And it was SO MUCH FUN, though rather exhausting, probably because I'm not used to it. For the first time in my life, perhaps, I realized why some people cook as a stress buster and as a creative outlet.
However, this week, with two kids who like simple American style food and one who likes the vegetable -leftover stirfries I make for myself, we kept it extremely simple. It was all about homemade pizza and storebought chicken tenders and pancakes-for-dinner, and tuna pasta casserole. That kind of thing.
This summer, if we ever do have a summer, I want to keep trying the Fun Kind of Cooking I so briefly experienced.
Health and Fitness
I am trying to avoid weighing myself more than once a week. In about 3 weeks I've lost three pounds. But I think it's better than that because I have been riding the stationary bike every day. I allow myself to read fun books during this time, which ends up being non-fiction about education, psychology or other similar things. Furthermore, I'm allowed to quick-read, in Mortimer Adler's inspectional style, and then if the book is a good one I can go back and read it again more carefully. So it's easy to keep cycling as I get caught up in the book. I have been setting my bike to the calorie setting and I usually cycle about 500 calories a day, which takes about 2 hours, but it's fun.
For all of last year I could rarely cycle more than 20 minutes. In the past I would have felt discouraged about not really progressing, but approaching age 50 is a wake-up call and I knew 20 minutes was the minimum so I just congratulated myself on keeping up with that minimum. But suddenly I did this jump into a much higher level. So the take-away lesson for me is to keep persevering with what I can do and be patient, not expect an amazing change right away.
Recent Reading Mileage
These are a few of the books I've been reading as I ride the bike.
Forever Lily. A story of a woman who went to China to support a friend who was adopting a baby, and ended up adopting the baby herself. The main story was interesting, but it had a strange italicized dream story about an ancient Chinese empress who gives birth out of wedlock and loses the baby -- so the modern story was supposed to be a kind of reincarnation of the old story. Certainly it kept my attention but it would not be my first pick for a resource if you want to learn more about international adoption.
Free Range Kids.: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Kids Without Going Nuts with Worry I guess some people don't much like her humorous writing style -- she sounds sort of like a 21st century Erma Bombeck to me. Personally, I laughed at the funny parts. The basic thesis is that America is actually as safe nowadays as it was in the 70's when most of us were allowed to ride our bikes all over town, take the city bus, and explore the woods by the hour without even a cell phone. She doesn't recommend skipping the car seatbelts or the bicycle helmets or sending your children to walk through the inner city at night, but she does think that because of media influence and parental peer pressure we have become much more paranoid than is good for us or for the optimal development of our kids. I enjoyed the book.
Cutting Myself in Half: How I Lost 150 Pounds One Byte at a Time. Fun read. It is written by a very bright teenage boy who used to weigh almost 300 pounds. By exercising and watching his calorie intake he managed to get himself wonderfully fit and lean and even got asked to carry the Olympic torch during one stage of the relay. Since he loved video games he structured his weight loss efforts like a game, allowing himself a calorie "budget" and thinking of weight -traps as obstacles in the game. He tells about how he thinks life stresses like his parents' divorce turned him from an ordinary chubby kid into a morbidly obese teenager, and how a YMCA membership and some support from a trainer there started the changes that revolutionized his life. He offers a plan for the teenager that wants to lose weight that is sensible and not gimmicky or dangerous. It would probably be a good book for a teenage boy that wanted the inspiration and some tips to lose excess weight. (my boy of that age is trying to gain some weight -- he's about the same size as the boy in the book got when he lost enough weight, but he wants to bulk up at least 10 or 15 more pounds since he's a football player).
Why We Run: A Natural History
This is a book by Bernd Heimlich, a good natural history writer who was born in Germany and emigrated to the US with his parents, who are also natural historian. It turns out he is also a competitive long distance runner who ran in high school and college, dropped it for years, and picked it up when he was 40. Good inspiration for my exercise efforts. He talks about how different types of animals run and applies some of that perspective to how people function as runners.
Just a Phone Call Away: Secrets of a Master Networker
I didn't read all of this book, because it's really about networking in your business, but I read the parts that seemed to apply more to everyday life. His idea is that getting to know people, networking, helps you succeed in business and in life. He doesn't promote networking to "use" people or do the hard sell on them, so much as he believes that networking is beneficial for everyone. He likes to do favors for people by getting them in touch with each other even if it doesn't directly benefit his own interests. So he has sort of a win/win, synergistic approach to the concept of networking. The second part of the book was about forming a networking club and I wasn't too much interested in that but I did like his approach to getting to know lots of people. Incidentally, I think a lot of women do this intuitively from what I've seen. They are in touch with lots of different folks and do more than their fair share of keeping the community connected. Our real estate agent is also a natural at networking -- I love listening to him talk, he gives out information about the community like a gift -- it is not gossiping because it has a positive function in helping people know who other people are and what they are engaged in.
Well, I'm off now to vacuum and play with my 8 year old and then make dinner!
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Keeping Fit after Forty
Hey, it's Memorial Day Weekend, so nobody is reading, so I can update about my fitness journey quietly.
Index of other posts here.
It was last May about this time that I read The End of Overeating and decided to try to make some changes in my habits. As I move well into perimenopause my weight has been creeping upwards whenever I don't pay attention. Something similar has been happening ever since I was a teenager, but in my younger days my weight would only go up about 5-10 pounds when I let things slide for too long.
Nowadays it goes up 15-25 pounds and from what I have read, my less effective habits will get in my way more and more as my years adance. A middle-aged woman's bones lose density gradually and her muscles (what there were -- never very much developed in my case) will be replaced with fat IF she is not careful to avoid this. The result is lower metabolism and more risk of debilitating chronic issues.
On the bright side, lifestyle makes more and more of a difference at these ages. Healthy food and proper exercise can do a lot. Even people who didn't exercise regularly in the past can improve markedly with relatively mild levels of exercise (say, a 30 minute walk 4 times a week).
And though I've found my middle aged body is less forgiving of lapses, my middle aged mind and will seem at least a bit more able to plan and keep to the plan. Since I can't any longer convince myself that my health will last forever, I'm more motivated to take my responsibility seriously.
Last year I aimed to lose 15 pounds and keep it off. Instead I lost almost 25 pounds and then put 15 back on. If you look at my weight chart at the bottom of my blog (there for accountability reasons and so I don't forget about it!) you see that I was slowly creeping up during the holidays, but I got through February with a gain of only about 6 pounds, and I was still under my original goal. Then BAM I gained 8 pounds all in slightly over a month. I wasn't conscious of doing anything THAT differently except that I stopped exercising during this time.
Conclusion:
Exercise really makes a difference!
IT didn't really seem to matter much when I was in my 20's or 30's. My mother in law says that is when you are chasing toddlers so you get your exercise naturally, and maybe she is right! But nowadays my metabolism seems to demand a more systematic approach. Probably a good thing, since there is all kinds of evidence for the benefits of regular and intentional exercise in all areas of middle-aged life.
Another good thing is that FINALLY I enjoy exercise. This was never true before. To be honest, I think I can tolerate being somewhat bored better than I used to. Plus, I really notice a difference in mood and mental energy now after I exercise. I honestly didn't used to when I was younger, but now I do. I have a feeling my whole system is slightly less flexible than it was 20 years ago so it responds more dramatically to things that are good for it.
My main mode of exercise is riding the stationary bike. There is a rack where you can put a book and that's what I usually do. When my family convinces me to watch a movie with them I bike while I'm watching. My problem with movies is that I get bored and claustrophobic when watching them, so riding gives me something to do to get rid of the excess energy.
I also stretch and lift light weights about 3 times a week. This becomes increasingly important as you get closer to menopause and aren't packing babies and toddlers around anymore.
When it snows, I love to shovel the deck. That is a good workout that combines resistance and some aerobic exercise.
This summer, I'm looking forward to raking the yard.
I love to go on morning hikes but Aidan gets up at dawn when everyone else besides me is asleep, and I don't like to leave him here. Sometimes I take him on walks but it's a lot slower pace because of his hemiplegia. Sometimes we go on family hikes and Aidan goes in his wheelchair. But we don't do that regularly enough for it to be my main mode of exercise.
All the research about exercise seems to show that you are most likely to succeed if you:
1. Have more than one option for exercise (different activities for different seasons, or several activities so that if your first plan isn't going to work, you can resort to another one).
2. Find something you rather like to do -- I like stationary biking, but many people simply die of boredom doing that. On the other hand, if I signed up for a gym workout I just wouldn't go, so that wouldn't work for me, not at this season of my life.
To this I will add that what worked for me the best was not expecting too much of myself. All last spring I only expected myself to bike for 20 minutes a day and lift weights twice a week for 10 minutes. Often I did more, but this was the basic minimum.
This year I am naturally motivated to exercise for much longer than that. I just don't want to stop after 20 minutes because I feel like I'm just getting warmed up. But it took a long time for me to get to feeling that way. During the months of exercising minimally, instead of suffering, I was having fun, so I built up a mental habit that associated fun with exercise.
It was so worth it to have that foundation, because for many years I hated exercise. I still sometimes have trouble getting out of inertia to actually start, but the difference is that now I know that once I start, I will enjoy it and feel good, and if I need to have a lighter day, I can back off without guilt.
That might be a temperament thing. If I was choleric maybe I would want to push myself and try daring things like snowboarding. In this way, finding what works was a learning process for me. I made myself focus on progress rather than what I wasn't doing, and it worked.
When I exercise it pays off in that I have more cravings for healthy food and less for food that messes up my blood sugar. So I naturally cut back on the white flour and sugar. (and it helps that it is spring --- I don't like candy and sweets as much in the spring as I do in the winter).
Index of other posts here.
It was last May about this time that I read The End of Overeating and decided to try to make some changes in my habits. As I move well into perimenopause my weight has been creeping upwards whenever I don't pay attention. Something similar has been happening ever since I was a teenager, but in my younger days my weight would only go up about 5-10 pounds when I let things slide for too long.
Nowadays it goes up 15-25 pounds and from what I have read, my less effective habits will get in my way more and more as my years adance. A middle-aged woman's bones lose density gradually and her muscles (what there were -- never very much developed in my case) will be replaced with fat IF she is not careful to avoid this. The result is lower metabolism and more risk of debilitating chronic issues.
On the bright side, lifestyle makes more and more of a difference at these ages. Healthy food and proper exercise can do a lot. Even people who didn't exercise regularly in the past can improve markedly with relatively mild levels of exercise (say, a 30 minute walk 4 times a week).
And though I've found my middle aged body is less forgiving of lapses, my middle aged mind and will seem at least a bit more able to plan and keep to the plan. Since I can't any longer convince myself that my health will last forever, I'm more motivated to take my responsibility seriously.
Last year I aimed to lose 15 pounds and keep it off. Instead I lost almost 25 pounds and then put 15 back on. If you look at my weight chart at the bottom of my blog (there for accountability reasons and so I don't forget about it!) you see that I was slowly creeping up during the holidays, but I got through February with a gain of only about 6 pounds, and I was still under my original goal. Then BAM I gained 8 pounds all in slightly over a month. I wasn't conscious of doing anything THAT differently except that I stopped exercising during this time.
Conclusion:
Exercise really makes a difference!
IT didn't really seem to matter much when I was in my 20's or 30's. My mother in law says that is when you are chasing toddlers so you get your exercise naturally, and maybe she is right! But nowadays my metabolism seems to demand a more systematic approach. Probably a good thing, since there is all kinds of evidence for the benefits of regular and intentional exercise in all areas of middle-aged life.
Another good thing is that FINALLY I enjoy exercise. This was never true before. To be honest, I think I can tolerate being somewhat bored better than I used to. Plus, I really notice a difference in mood and mental energy now after I exercise. I honestly didn't used to when I was younger, but now I do. I have a feeling my whole system is slightly less flexible than it was 20 years ago so it responds more dramatically to things that are good for it.
My main mode of exercise is riding the stationary bike. There is a rack where you can put a book and that's what I usually do. When my family convinces me to watch a movie with them I bike while I'm watching. My problem with movies is that I get bored and claustrophobic when watching them, so riding gives me something to do to get rid of the excess energy.
I also stretch and lift light weights about 3 times a week. This becomes increasingly important as you get closer to menopause and aren't packing babies and toddlers around anymore.
When it snows, I love to shovel the deck. That is a good workout that combines resistance and some aerobic exercise.
This summer, I'm looking forward to raking the yard.
I love to go on morning hikes but Aidan gets up at dawn when everyone else besides me is asleep, and I don't like to leave him here. Sometimes I take him on walks but it's a lot slower pace because of his hemiplegia. Sometimes we go on family hikes and Aidan goes in his wheelchair. But we don't do that regularly enough for it to be my main mode of exercise.
All the research about exercise seems to show that you are most likely to succeed if you:
1. Have more than one option for exercise (different activities for different seasons, or several activities so that if your first plan isn't going to work, you can resort to another one).
2. Find something you rather like to do -- I like stationary biking, but many people simply die of boredom doing that. On the other hand, if I signed up for a gym workout I just wouldn't go, so that wouldn't work for me, not at this season of my life.
To this I will add that what worked for me the best was not expecting too much of myself. All last spring I only expected myself to bike for 20 minutes a day and lift weights twice a week for 10 minutes. Often I did more, but this was the basic minimum.
This year I am naturally motivated to exercise for much longer than that. I just don't want to stop after 20 minutes because I feel like I'm just getting warmed up. But it took a long time for me to get to feeling that way. During the months of exercising minimally, instead of suffering, I was having fun, so I built up a mental habit that associated fun with exercise.
It was so worth it to have that foundation, because for many years I hated exercise. I still sometimes have trouble getting out of inertia to actually start, but the difference is that now I know that once I start, I will enjoy it and feel good, and if I need to have a lighter day, I can back off without guilt.
That might be a temperament thing. If I was choleric maybe I would want to push myself and try daring things like snowboarding. In this way, finding what works was a learning process for me. I made myself focus on progress rather than what I wasn't doing, and it worked.
When I exercise it pays off in that I have more cravings for healthy food and less for food that messes up my blood sugar. So I naturally cut back on the white flour and sugar. (and it helps that it is spring --- I don't like candy and sweets as much in the spring as I do in the winter).
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