Mindful Walking by Katy

Lots of adjustments this past week or so.  My wonderful daughter moved to NYC last week and I've had to work on how this feels.  I am so pleased and proud of her - don't know if I could have done it at her age!  And at the same time I miss our easy access to one another being in the same city.  My boyfriend is also away and gearing up for an overseas stint in the middle east, so between both adjustments my heartstrings seem stretched more than normal. And yet I have found ways to soothe myself and know that all is well. Thankfully Heather has been a solid support for me as she always is! ☺

Well as in my last post I was hoping some motivation would strike and I'd get a routine going walking in my new sneakers!  So far I can say I've been out 4 times this week.  Granted it has been relatively decent outside...one morning a bit colder than I thought but I mustered through!

Aside from just feeling good moving my normally sedentary butt, I am very much enjoying the silence in the early morning. I am out before 7am as after that  the neighborhood wakes up with dog walkers and kids walking to school.  I LOVE the silence - (however can appreciate a busier morning walk as well).  What I have come to notice are the birds.  I love birds-nature, streams, trees, animals,

My street, view from corner

flowers - you name it.  But I am focused on the birds when I walk and they don't disappoint.  I have seen a Robin in the same tree on the same high branch,  singing a similar tune a couple times already...must be HIS morning routine as well.  :)  Since I do walk at a quick pace I do work up a sweat by the time I round the corner - so I at least feel some difference.  THANKFULLY my shoes have kept me pain free on these shorter walks, and I'm hoping it continues. 

My diet has improved during this time as well - not going into detail as I'm still fine-tuning it all, but more planning has helped - I have a ways to go!  Overall I just feel better about feeling productive towards something positive and getting healthier emotionally & physically at the same time.  Empowering!

On being gorgeous (without a hint of exposed flesh in sight)....by Heather

http://advancedstyle.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/beatrix-ost-in-your-body-is-good-place.html


If ever there is a woman who shows that style, elegance, attractiveness and intelligence doesn't diminish with age - then it has to be the perfectly fabulous Beatrix Ost.

Please let me look like this.

Brushing Off The Cobwebs... By Katy

I am guilty of inactivity - in so many areas that I won't bore with too many details.  And yet behind the scenes I have still felt busy with 'stuff'.   Lots of happenings in my personal life of late which happens to any of us.  My daughter is moving to NYC for job and change of scenery and boyfriend will be working overseas for a few months.  And here I sit!  It's been a whirlwind of lists and errands and tearful moments, while still working full time and trying to sort out my own life. 

Before that, most of winter in fact I was feeling the anxiety of their upcoming changes, while dealing with some rough patches of feeling down and unmotivated (some hormonal, some winter blues).  Let's add to that the fact that I hadn't done much of anything to improve my eating or exercise.  Granted I haven't been eating terribly, just haven't taken it in hand to REALLY incorporate lasting improvements. 

And the exercise...I'm a bit of a fair weather friend- and have been impatiently waiting for temps above 20 and no ice on the ground...we have passed the main hurdle for that I hope and I've been out a couple times for mind-clearing walks.  Only to find that my old NIKE's are not going to work with my plantar fasciitis.  OUCH!  A walk in the wrong shoes can leave me hobbled for the next couple days.  So the sneakers (as we call them) in the photo are my expensive gift to me - and seem to be ok so far.  I just want to have a regular routine - and get some miles under my belt.  My form of cardio for now because it also serves as a mindfulness activity.  Nature calms me and being outside, even in my quiet suburban neighborhood, is soothing for me.  I am a very early morning person so I'm out with the occasional jogger or dog walker and that's it!  AND I started a once a week yoga class- again, just for me and stress reduction in mind.

So I intend to be on here a bit more regularly with things that are working and things that just aren't!  Hopefully more of the former! ☺

 

Perfunctory Eating....by Heather

When I first started looking in to how I could adapt my diet to incorporate the kinds of principles talked about at some length by Peter Attia at the Eating Academy - I was carried away with the theory (to which I still hold fast) but didn't think through some of the down sides.

Peter has done a couple of posts detailing what he actually eats - he's surprised, he says at the traffic these posts attract - I don't know why that would surprise him - he is serious about staying nutritionally in ketosis and that isn't as easy as he makes it sound - so obviously people are going to want to know what it takes, what he eats.

One simple point of his however, caught my attention - Currently I only eat three meals per day about once a week. I eat two meals per day probably 4 times per week, and one meal per day twice per week.

This pulled me up short, because irrespective of what I eat, I think this sounds lonely and bleak - does he eat with the family? I'm down to guessing here, but given he has at least one child, I would say largely he can't do.

So here is a guy who has it nailed as far as I'm concerned - the eating and the exercise and the weight management and the health - but I find myself stalling everso slightly because that little sentence bothers me....

We as a family sometimes struggle sometimes with competing activities to maintain proper meal times at the dining table, but it's something we largely insist upon whenever we can - and now our eldest son is at University - sitting down as a family, the full family, is rarer still - but I like the bringing together of all the souls I love most - and sharing food, and tales and life. The dining table is the surest place for this to happen.

The joyousness of food, or the lacking of it, is something a lot of people would struggle with - not that he's wrong in any shape or form or that what he says won't work - but because in reading his blog, I find it very  scientific, which contrarily makes it once understandable and attractive but also less likable; perfunctory eating isn't attractive to folk and I come away thinking - how can I tweak this for me and mine? This is also the reason I know, that whatever I say, Katy won't go for it.

Katy is the ying to my yang - I have proven evidence in me, that a la' the Eating Academy',  I can alter what I eat, not feel hungry particularly and lose weight - because that is exactly what I have done - but if the joie de vivre is removed, it becomes a lot more difficult to 'sell'

Peter Attia (and I could be doing him a massive dis-service here) doesn't seem to me to enjoy the process of eating, and the corollary to that for me would be the lack of the socialness of the activity.

On saying all of that - my family meals are far less the conviviality of the Italian family set up above - but more of this......

Jane Fonda I ain't.....by Heather

I think there was a time when I equated losing weight and feeling great with sweat- for hours  at a stretch.

I remember, within a few weeks of giving birth to my eldest, some 26 years ago - getting down with Jane Fonda, complete with ankle warmers and neon lycra - and sweated and heaved myself in front of the video recorder! It was the most important thing - to banish that flabby mid section.

Looking back, I don't regret it necessarily, but I do wish I had spent more time just being with my daughter - they don't stay little for all that long - and now those moments are gone forever. But this was the eighties -and, besides the shoulder pads - it was all about the burn.

These days, I really don't want to feel the burn - in fact, I'm busy, and I want to spend my time smelling the roses, quite literally in most cases - and my limited time means that how I utilise my spare time is paramount - and I certainly don't have hours to spare for long exercise routines.

Katy and I disagree on the usefulness of exercise with regard to weight loss.

To keep this post short - my view is that I couldn't do enough exercise in a day to counteract the effects of eating the wrong things. And I don't have enough of a life left to squander it doing stuff that I really don't enjoy. So I don't intend to.

My exercise routine is something to be enjoyed - there is no denying the health benefit to exercise, and the benefit to your overall well being - I just don't feel that at my age it is enough for real and sustained weight loss.
Its also worth saying, that in the last 26 years - I haven't really stuck to an exercise routine - I go in fits and starts - and knowing this, it would be silly to think I was suddenly, and realistically going to go against known form and start a regime that was exerting enough to make a difference to my weight for ever more.

Better was to take the benefits of that which I enjoyed - and do that - enjoy it. Instead of punishing myself, by making myself endure something I plainly didn't enjoy at all.

To this end - you will find me following Seane Corn in yoga practice; and you will too find me heaving around horse manure on my allottment - all of which is part of my life - something I will describe with all the right adjectives - joy being one of them.

Because my mental health is every bit as important to me as my physical health and being able to combine these elements is a complete win win.

yes I looked just like this!