Tag Archives: dragon boating

I Stole This…

4 Jun

Alright, so yesterday (Saturday) was the 500m Race Regatta, for those not in the know that is for Dragon Boating. 🙂 I had planned todays blog to be about yesterdays racing and all that happened but it is late (around 2am Monday morning) and I wanna try to get some sleep tonight (I have a cold and breathing is currently quite the challenge so sleep is not a guaranteed restful type of activity right now, sigh) so instead of my Dragon Boating post I am leaving you with a stolen list from http://www.stumbleupon.com  I will not completely endorse this website yet as all I have read is this one article and I followed a link to get there but I like the list and thought you might too.

Enjoy! 😀

Fitness Facts
1) Carbohydrates, protein, fat, and alcohol have 4, 4, 9, and 7 calories per gram respectively.
2) It takes a 3500 calorie deficit to lose 1 pound.
3) Insulin and growth hormone have an inverse relationship.
4) The average person can store 500 grams of glycogen.
5) Only fat and protein are essential macronutrients – carbohydrates aren’t.
6) Muscle glycogen is about 3 parts water to 1 part glucose.
7) You burn more calories during the 23 hours you don’t exercise than the 1 hour you do.
8) You don’t need to do cardio to lose weight.
9) The fat burning zone does not burn more total fat calories – only a higher percentage of calories from fat.
10)You’re never too old to do squats.
11) Weight loss is not a physical challenge – it’s a mental one.
12) The scale cannot measure body fat percentage.
13) You can eat anything you want and still lose weight – but weight doesn’t always equal fat.
14) You can’t target fat loss – fat loss is systemic.
15) Muscle does not weigh more than fat – it’s just denser than it.
16) 0 grams of fat on a label doesn’t always mean there’s no fat in the food product.
17) Whole grain bread is still a processed food.
18) Eating healthy is not more expensive than a junk food diet.
19) You can’t calculate body fat percentage from height and weight alone – you need to physically measure it.
20) You can get glucose from both protein and glycerol – not just carbohydrates.
21) Just because a box says “whole grain” on it, it doesn’t make it healthy.
22) You should never attempt weight loss at the expense of your health.
23) Being vegetarian doesn’t just mean you don’t eat meat – it means you follow a plant-based diet.
24) Workout times and negative side effects are positively correlated.
25) Gym membership prices are negotiable.
26) Cooking your food can both lower some nutrient content, and make some more bioavailable.
27) There’s a high correlation between the fitness level of the people close to you, and your own physical fitness.
28) It’s harder to put on 10 pounds of muscle than it is to lose 10 pounds of fat.
29) Once an adult, fat cells can be created, but they cannot be lost – only shrunken.
30) Eating at night does not make you fat – overeating does.
31) You don’t need to do curls to get good biceps.
32) Being skinny does not automatically mean you have a low body fat.
33) The perimeter of the grocery store is where 90% of the healthy food is.
34) If bad food is in the house, you’ll be more likely to eat it.
35) Thyroid hormone output and exercise intensity are positively correlated.
36) Healthy levels of testosterone are good for both men and women.
37) You don’t need a gym membership to strength train.
38) Unless you weigh less than 100 pounds, it’s unlikely you need less than 1000 calories to lose weight.
39) Workout intensity is positively correlated with the degree of EPOC – the afterburn effect.
40) There are 3 types of skeletal muscle fibers – type I, type II-A, and type II-B.
41) 80% of people who begin an exercise program will quit.
42) The body has 3 energy systems – ATP-PC, anaerobic glycolysis, and aerobic.
43) Strength gains come from muscle hypertrophy and improved muscle fiber recruitment.
44) Dehydrating a muscle by 3% can cause a 10% loss of strength.
45) The thermic effect of food (TEF) is highest for protein.
46) Lactic acid is not the cause of delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
47) The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn at rest.
48) Direct abdominal exercises are not necessary to get good abs.
49) You can lose weight and still gain muscle; likewise, you can also gain weight while still losing fat.
50) Consistency and patience are key to long term successful weight loss.

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A Day Of Recovery

13 May

Dragon Boat season has been happening for 4 weeks now…hmm, I should clarify, for my team it’s been happening for 4 weeks now, other teams get on the water much sooner. I wish my team got on the water sooner but we’re not quite as competitive as some of the other teams, shrug, whatcha gonna do?

Anyways, we’ve been training for 4 weeks and yesterday was our first Race Regatta, The Spring Sprint! 😀 Any race day is a good race day in my opinion but yesterday was just perfect! Sun was shining but it wasn’t too hot, there were lots of people competing but not so many you got lost in the crowd, the atmosphere was happy and encouraging. That’s the thing about Dragon Boaters, on the water during a race you want to beat the other team no matter what, it is waaaaar! But as soon as the race is over everyone is friendly and nice and we all get along, shrug. It’s a weird phenomenon that I really enjoy.

So yesterday was all about getting up early, competing in races (three of them to be exact) and being stuck outside for approximately 8 hours straight. I’m all good with the getting up early part, and I love the competing part, but the being outside in sunlight for an extended period of time part I’m not so good with.

I’m a natural redhead, we are not meant to be in the sunlight for anything over, oh, say, 5 seconds at a time? You think I’m joking but I’m not. When I walk to the gym it takes me about 3 minutes, I consider being exposed to sunlight for the 3 minute walk there and the 3 minute walk home excessive, it’s just too much sun!

Friends laugh at me all the time and make comments about how I am a vampire but hey, come talk to me when we are in our 50’s and I still have good skin and you are all wrinkled and sun spotted and having to go to the doctors every week cause of yet another early warning sign of cancer appearing on your skin. You know your tan isn’t healthy and yet you do it? pffft. I’d rather guard my natural paleness the way a fat kid guards the last slice of cake at a birthday party then attempt to match everyone else in my age bracket by cooking my skin either in natural sunlight or in a tanning bed. *shudder*

How do I deal with having to be outside for such a long period of time? Long sleeves, and pants, and runners, and a heck of a lot of sunscreen on my neck, hands and face. What? You think I forget about my hands and neck? Ladies, that is where our skin starts showing its age fastest! You can cover up all sorts of skin flaws on your face with makeup but hands and necks? Much trickier! So take care of them now so they continue to look good later…that’s my motto anyways. 🙂  Sadly, I forgot my hat (rookie mistake! ack!) so my scalp got a bit burned where my hair part is, suckfest. That tends to happen once a year no matter how careful I am so hopefully this means I won’t burn it again later in the summer *crosses fingers*

Despite all my carefulness I still end up having to take a day of recovery the day after being outside for so long. I don’t know how people can be outside all day and then spend the next day doing all their normal day to day stuff. Being outside that long in the sun exhausts me! I always end up sleeping longer the next day, wanting to nap somewhere during the day, having no energy, less mental focus, I am just all worn out. I hate it. It’s like being in sunlight drains me…hmm, maybe I am some weird vampire hybrid, like Blade! That’d be kinda cool… 😉

So yeah, today I didn’t do much, slept in ridiculously late (even by my standards!), watched some tv, did some stuff online, resisted the urge to nap since I slept so late, waited till after sundown to go grocery shopping, did some more online stuff and am now blogging before going to bed. Ridiculously lazy day (again, even by my standards) but nothing could have gotten me out of my bed any earlier and I didn’t have the energy or the desire to do anything else all day. Heck, I even let my hair air dry instead of blow drying it, that’s how lazy I was! *hangs head in embarrassment*

By tomorrow I will be back to normal, so lazy but not this lazy lol which is good cause I have Dragon Boat training in the evening, gotta be on top of my game for that! 🙂

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Ahhhh Telus

10 Feb

My internet died, went down, crashed…whatever term you want to use it went away. It was very sad, doubly so since I don’t have cable so I felt especially cut off from the world.  😦

I don’t understand those people that willingly stop going online and watching tv and using cell phones for a week or a month or 6 months or a year as some kind of test to prove they don’t need technology. I neeeeeed technology! I crave it! I live for it! I was on facebook and twitter via my smart phone (which is not very smart considering how many technical problems the pos has, erg) every 5 minutes or so terrified I was missing something hugely important!

Oh, and no, I don’t mean hugely important like what a friends kid did or didn’t do that was oh-so-cute *rolls eyes* I can’t stand those facebook status updates, sigh, I mean like, a natural disaster, or Obama being killed (and yes, I do think he has a higher chance of getting assassinated (side note, haha! a word that says “ass” twice in the spelling of it!  😛 ) then Harper…the Prime Minister of Canada in case you were wondering who the heck I was talking about lol), or the oilsands lighting fire and all of Alberta being evacuated (I’m allowed to say that, I’m Albertan lol). So much of what I know of the world comes from the internet, it used to come from the news but as I mentioned above I don’t have cable anymore so no more 6pm news watching for me…who’d of thought I’d ever miss the news?? Crazy world! Crazy!

Happily, Telus sent over a very nice and competent man who fixed the internet connection and voila! I was back on the information super highway…right in time to be super busy for days and have almost no time to get online let alone post on wordpress, figures huh?

Today though, something way fun happened that I just gotta share! I had a photoshoot today that was sweeeeeeet! It wasn’t an acting photoshoot, it was for Dragon Boating, I (along with others) got asked to take part in the photoshoot to create the new posters and advertising images for the upcoming Dragon Boating season – how awesome is that?!?! It was all done in a studio, we had paddles but no pfd’s (personal flotation devices, fancy way of saying lifejacket…seriously, when did we stop saying lifejacket??) and we sat on these boxes so that we could pretend we were on the water paddling lol. They will photoshop the pictures so the final images will appear as if we are in boats racing. Yet one more reason I love technology! lol Cause man, if we’d had to be on the water for this shoot we’d of frozen our hands off, the water is not yet warm people!

I felt so honoured to be asked, especially once I got there and saw the other people taking part in the shoot. They are all in so much better shape then me, I don’t know how I fell in to this crowd. lol. Paddlers are those people that are tanned, and no nonsense, and the women don’t wear makeup (at least on days when they are on the water) and their hair is either really short or yanked back in a pony tail and they are fit and outdoorsy and well, a lot of things I am not. Luckily, they are also really accepting of others and happy to have people around who also enjoy the sport, even if they don’t fit the stereotypical mold of a racer. Phew! Lucky for me! lol I got to meet a two time World’s Champion, I couldn’t believe she trains out of the same place I train, wow. Lemme tell ya, I thought I was getting decent upper arm and shoulder definition, she is so muscle defined even when she doesn’t flex she’s looking way toned, but not in a guy way!  😛

For the shoot we were all sprayed with glycerin and water so we looked like we got sprayed while on the water paddling, it is sticky feeling and kinda odd but it works. However, it’s been hours since I’ve been home and I washed my face once already and I am still finding little random sticky spots on my neck and face, ick. It got in my hair too, le sigh. My bangs feel nasty but oh well, it’ll wash out when I shower.  🙂 and really, I complain, but it doesn’t really bother me, I’ve been through lots worse on photoshoots but I always have so much fun that I don’t really care. Heck, I was put in a bald cap once (which, considering how much hair I have was soooo hard for the make up girl to do) and when she took it off she peeled off some of the skin along my hairline cause she didn’t unstick the glue properly. That hurt! But even with the pain, it was totally worth it. 🙂 I must be crazy huh? lol

So, food and exercise for this past week, I was active monday, tuesday and wednesday to levels I am happy with. Monday and wednesday I hit the gym, both days I got thwarted in my wanting to use the weights (the weight room was booked for a class both days) but I did get in over an hour of cardio, some ab work and some stretching on both days. Tuesday I cleaned the apartment, which I never totally feel should qualify as exercise but I know that it does so, shrug, I’ll use it lol. Thursday I walked, and did manage to work up a bit of a sweat, but I don’t feel it was enough walking to properly qualify as exercise and then today I was photoshooting and then we so tired the rest of the day cause of being up so early and on not enough sleep I didn’t really do much. Totally my bad, I should’ve gone to the gym, or at least for a walk, but I just couldn’t make myself move.

Although, having said that, I seemed to have no trouble moving my ass to the kitchen to keep getting snacks, sigh. I didn’t clue in till way later that I was probably eating so much today because I was so tired and my body was trying to get energy, tsk tsk to me. I should have just gone for a nap or something, that would have probably taken care of the over eating problem I had today but yeah, by the time I realized it was already almost midnight. It’s not often I get way tired like that anymore so I forgot that could happen, *rolls eyes* I’ll hafta be more diligent on early morning days from now on.

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My Brain Is Stumped

21 Oct

I can’t seem to write a post today to save my life. sigh. It’s not writer’s block exactly, I have written two well thought out drafts…and then I deleted them because they are not what I want to post on this blog. One was too well, weird, the other was somehow becoming political…all cause I wanted to share a picture but the picture needs an explanation and the explanation was getting out of hand. I am the least politically minded person out there and well, hello? this is a weight loss blog – not a politics blog! Too bad about the picture tho…shrug.

I haven’t posted in a couple days, mostly cause nothing all that interesting was going on. lol. I had intended to post yesterday but got in this strange mood and actually wanted to pack so I figured I better not waste it lol. It’s not that I don’t like packing, I mean, really, what’s not to like? Put on some music, have a drink near by and put your stuff in boxes – easy peasy. 🙂 But I keep putting it off, mostly cause I am lazy…and scared of spiders. *shudder*. I don’t want to pack at night cause I’m scared when I’m moving furniture or getting stuff from under my bed or up high in my closet I’ll disturb spiders and I’ll see them but not easily enough to be able to kill them before they hide somewhere I can’t follow…like under a baseboard. ick. Then I’ll be freaking out about the spider, and how it is watching me and waiting for me to sleep so it can exact some sort of revenge, and I’ll be too icked out to do much else.

During the day I am out and about doing random prepping-for-the-move errands (like getting boxes, booking a truck etc) and when I get home from all of that I have just enough time to get a bite to eat before going to boxing. Which, fyi, tuesday was my last Dragon Boating session, then I boxed wed, thurs and fri and every-freakin-muscle in my body aches, and I mean aches! *groan*

This whole week I have felt off, I can’t figure what it is, but the boxing classes seemed harder then normal, my rowing was off a bit, it just seems like I am getting muscle fatigue quicker and it’s lasting longer then what I normally experience. I am hoping this is my body realizing I’m gonna keep making it work out even if it does insist on plateuing and so it’s caved and is building muscle mass and getting rid of fat – fingers crossed!

But yeah, so really, the only time I have to pack is in the evenings after boxing, so starting around 9pm or so but that’s when things get creepy cause of spiders…so I’ve been letting the whole packing thing kinda stay on the back burner…*whistles innocently*

I realized (thanks to my mom) that perhaps I have let things slide just a tad too much and should start packing. ugh.

I am quite possibly the least organized packer out there lol. I started in my room, got to a point and stopped there. Oh, and the ‘point’ I got to and then stopped at? Doesn’t really make any sense. Some of my books were packed but not even half, the contents of my desk drawers were packed up but not the stuff on my desk, most of the non-clothing items in my closet were packed but not quite all of them…you get the idea I’m sure. 😛 Then I moved to the living room…*rolls eyes*…most of my movies are packed, but not all, I did manage to pack an entire two shelves of a three shelf bookcase, and some random decorative items are now packed…ok, fine, most of them are packed. lol.

The only thing I am organized with is the labelling of boxes. Every box gets a number, I have a notebook where I write down the box number and the contents of that box so I know where every item is. Oh, and each box is labelled what room it needs to go in to at the new place, if it has fragile items in it and if it is heavy…I’d say that’s a decent level of organization, kinda… 😉

I’m happy to be able to say that the food-buying rules I came up with a couple weeks ago are still holding firm. 🙂 I am only buying (when needed obviously lol) eggs, milk, bread, yogurt, fresh fruit. I am not buying frozen food items, canned or boxed foods. This is not some weird addition to my healthy eating plan, lol, this is so I have less food to move. I don’t know about you but I somehow end up with a stockpile of boxed/canned foods. Most of it comes from when something is on ridiculously good sale, like the Thinsations, every now and then they go on a great sale so I stock up cause I know I am gonna eat them. But I always eat certain flavours faster then others so when I finish eating say, the Oreo Cakesters, instead of saying I can’t buy anymore until I have also finished the other types off I will buy more Cakesters. Gradually, I end up with more food in my cupboards then is practical for me space wise and diet wise. Sometimes it’s useful to have this stockpile, like when money is so short that I can’t afford to buy anything, then I know I have some food in the cupboards that I can eat, but really, a package of Thinsations chocolate covered pretzels does not a meal make – no matter how tasty they are. Yum! lol. 😛

Everytime I finish something and can get rid of the box or can or bag I get a little happy glow. 🙂 Yeah, so what if that is lame. 😛 lol. I did cave, kinda, and bought some frozen chicken breasts. I had a RainCheck for them cause when they were on sale the store was out of stock and I realized last night when cooking dinner once the chicken breast I was cooking was eaten the only things in my kitchen that would have protein were my last two hot dog weiners, eggs and peanut butter. Rather pathetic considering how often I exercise. lol. Sooooo, I decided buying the chicken, while yes, it was bringing food into the apartment, isn’t such a bad decision cause I’ll have eaten most of it by the time I move, and, well, it’s kind of a necessity, right? 😉

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I Cheer Blue

18 Oct

For the past two weeks I have missed the majority of The Biggest Loser episodes because my Dragon Boating was moved to Tuesdays. I tuned in this week just in time to see Bob ride a bull, Bonnie fell during the challenge, the red team finally won a challenge, Bonnie is pissed with Anna (her trainer), the blue team managed to not lose the weigh in, oh, and for some reason one of the guys on the black team didn’t have his weight loss count towards the team’s total…I’m not really sure why…

Even though I didn’t get to see the entire episode I still saw lots that kept me entertained. 🙂

This is the second season I have watched where instead of sitting on the couch and eating ice cream or cookies while watching I use the contestants as inspiration while I work on my (admittedly slower) weight loss journey. I don’t really “connect” with the contestants, it’s not like there’s been a contestant that I say “I so feel that person, we have so much in common” but that’s ok cause watching all of them while they push through their bad days helps me think I can push past my bad days.

I don’t like how they divided the teams this season, based on age…it seems like the older team, the Blue Team, is getting picked off one by one. I have this tendency to cheer for the underdog, in movies they usually win lol, but in real life rooting for the underdog doesn’t always guarantee you’ll be cheering for the winning team. 😛

I am not so delusional that I think either of the women left on the Blue Team will actually win the contest – I’m betting on the big guy on the Black Team whose the ex-football player. I mean, c’mon, dude is huge! Of course he’s gonna lose the most, he has the most to lose. Even though I know neither of the women on the Blue Team will win I am still cheering for them. Two of the oldest people on the ranch, with a new trainer, and more physical limitations then the other younger players…doomed I tell ya, doooooooomed! I keep wondering if the other teams will take pity on the Blue Team and do something to help them but I doubt it, they all want that big prize at the end and I don’t think any of them would dare risk their chance at winning it. lol. Human nature. 🙂

Today I ate:

1 Yoplait Light yogurt red velvet cake = 2 points

1 Weetabix = 1 point

1/2 C 1% milk = 1 point

1 banana = 1 point

leftover Coconut Shrimp Bites = approx 3 points

2 pcs toast = 3 points

1 fried egg = 2 points

1 cheese slice = 1 point

20 grams Vegetable Thins crackers = 2 points

1 pck Thinsations Peak Freans = 2 points

1 Thinsations Fudge Dipped Bar = 2 points

Total points eaten = 20

Exercise points earned = 3

I had to guesstimate on how many points the leftover shrimp from Red Lobster were, there were only like 5 in the container so I don’t think it was a crazy high amount of points eaten but just in case I guesstimated low I’m not eating anymore points today (even though I earned 3 exercise points). This kinda sucks cause I am still a tad hungry but oh well, shrug, I’m just gonna drink more water and/or tea and hope I’m actually just dehydrated and not for real hungry.

I’ve been enjoying my Yoplait Light yogurt that I got from the states on Sunday, so far I’ve had the Blueberry Pie and the Red Velvet Cake flavours. 😀 I blindly choose the yogurt flavour from the fridge so I was happily surprised when I got the red velvet cake flavour today – I’ve been psyched to try that one lol. There was a funny aftertaste with the blueberry pie flavour and the red velvet while yummy didn’t actually taste anything like red velvet cake lol. I have eight other flavours to eat so I’m reserving judgement on them all until I’ve gotten to taste all ten I bought. Then I will write a proper review on the Yoplait Light yogurts. 🙂 cause ya know, I’m sure you all care what I think about the yogurt line lol.

Go Blue Team Go!…might as well get my cheer on while the Blue Team still exists lol

Oh! and word of warning, if you get the Coconut Shrimp Bites from Red Lobster and microwave them to warm them up they explode in the microwave, a lot! lol. Luckily the container I warmed them up in had a cover so the batter that was being removed via the heat waves splattered onto the insides of the container and not all over the inside of my microwave. lol. I think I saved some calories by losing all that batter from the shrimp… 😀 lol

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Cold Feet

11 Oct

Brr. It’s been getting chillier and chillier over the past week or so and today my feet really felt it. You might think that’s weird, that it is my feet that are noticing the cold, but it’s not, you just don’t know the context for which the cold feet were happening. 😛

Because of the long weekend Dragon Boating got moved to today (Tuesday) which weather wise turned out to be a great stroke of luck since the weather yesterday was craptastic. Rainy, cold, windy…nasty weather to have to be in let alone be rowing in! Today started off raining but by the time I was going to the docks the rain had stopped and there was no wind, yah! There was a bit of a chill to the air but if you were dressed appropriately all was good. Well, when rowing I wear flip flop sandals, they cost me a wopping $4 at WalMart, I bought them specifically for Dragon Boating, I figured I wouldn’t be upset if the water damaged them cause they were cheap and if the boat tipped and I lost them to the depths of the water well, that’s ok too. 🙂

However, right as we were getting in the boat it started to rain, sigh, and since it had been raining earlier in the day there was a decent amount of water sitting in the bottom of the boat – these two events created the conditions that caused my cold feet cause well, my feet were sitting in water and getting rained on…Brr!

Once rowing it was fine cause you’re so busy rowing you don’t notice that you are cold and getting rained on. lol The only part that I ever notice getting cold is the hand that holds the lower part of the paddle cause that hand gets dunked in water with every stroke. That poor hand, the fingers go numb every time. Luckily part way through the evening we switch what side of the boat we are sitting on so both my hands get the opportunity to freeze lol. 😀

I was fine once I got home and had a hot shower but the weather is starting to affect me in ways that aren’t about rowing…

Everytime I eat I want something hot, salad weather is definitely over, sigh. Today I had oatmeal, soup, cooked chicken breast and hot mixed veg…that’s a lot of hot food! And don’t forget the endless cups of tea lol.

Normally when the weather cools (well, for about the past two years or so) I start making big amounts of soup, stew and chili, then I freeze them in single servings so that whenever I want something hot I have one perfect portion ready to go. I don’t want to do that right now though cause of moving at the end of the month…I am trying to not buy any new frozen foods or dried foods, I will buy milk, bread, yogurt, fresh fruit and fresh veg but that is it, for everything else I am just going to eat what I have and if I run out, well, oh well, shrug.

This is for two reasons, the first is moving is frickin expensive and this will help me save money and the second reason is that I want to move as little food as possible. If I force myself to eat through my food reserves then that is less stuff I have to move and somehow fit in to a smaller kitchen. Makes sense, right?

The only sucky part to this plan is I really really like soup and I don’t have enough canned soup to get me through till the end of the month so I will run out for sure…which, well, will suck. It’s the same with my much loved maple flavour baked beans, I could happily eat those daily but only have one can left, sadness. If nothing else I’ll be having interesting meals for the next few weeks, eating combos of whatever I can find. lol.

Today I ate:

1 pckg Quaker Hearty Medley’s = 3 points

1 can Fiesta Vegetable and Black Bean Soup = 4 points

2 pcs bread = 3 points

2 tsp margarine = 2 points

1/2 pecan tart = approx 4 points

1 chicken breast = 2 points

1/2 Cup brown rice = 2 points

mixed cooked veg = 0 points

1 tbls soy sauce = 0 points

1 Weight Watcher’s lemon cake = 1 point

Total Points Eaten = 21

Exercise Points Earned = 3

Soooo, could’ve done better, could’ve done worse.

After Dragon Boating 7 of us went to this bread bakery/cafe place near the water, they bake “traditional artisan breads in stone hearth ovens”. The place smelled yummy! I was just going to get a tea but one of the guys asked if I wanted to split a tart, he really wanted one but he also over the span of the past year lost a bunch of weigh so he tries to watch what he eats. He knows I have been doing the same thing so I think he figured if we split something neither of us would be eating too too many calories lol. I caved and said yes. *hangs head in shame*

It was a very yummy tart, and at least I only ate half and not the entire thing *I whine defensively* 😉

When I got home I pulled up the cafe website and found that they don’t provide nutritional information, grr, so I have emailed them asking for the info for the pecan tart that we ate and hopefully they will get that to me. For now I had to approximate the points value. I figure that tart could be anywhere from 6-10 points, which means for me since I ate half I’m looking at anywhere from 3-5 points, sigh. I chose 4 points lol. 😛 I hope I get the info from them soon and that I am not too far off…

Slightly ridiculous though, that this is supposed to be my super strict week and I ate half a tart…apparently I lost the full understanding of “strict”.

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My First Food Was: Banana

29 Sep

Now, I don’t mean my first food when I was a wee little thing and finally getting to eat something solid cause that was probably something gross, like Pablum, ugh. 😛

What I mean was my first food that I ate yesterday. As those of you who read my last post know, I’ve been dealing with an unwelcome guest named Stomach Ulcer (bad ulcer bad! tsk tsk! *shakes finger*) Well, on Tuesday of this week I could finally go back to the doctor and get a new (and hopefully better) drug. When I told him how I was doing and how the drug I was currently on was doing absolutely nothing good for me we chatted a bit and then he wrote me a new prescription, yah! He also gave me 5 weeks of samples for the drug he just prescribed, so I can try them for 5 weeks without having to fill and pay for a prescription and then if in 5 weeks the drugs are fully kicked in and working I can fill the prescription but if they aren’t working I can go back to the doc and get the next level of drug without having to pay for drugs that don’t work…does that make sense? I feel like I rambled…

Yesterday was Wednesday and by the time I ate something I had taken two of the new pills – cause I take one at night and one in the morning. I actually felt…hungry! And not the gnawing growling pain my stomach had been feeling before that wasn’t really hunger but tricked me in to thinking it was hunger…this was real hunger, with hunger growls an everything! Haven’t had that in a while lol.

I decided to have a real breakfast – the anticipation for food, real food not Weetabix cereal, was intense lol. I fried one egg and one slice of tomato then put those and one cheese slice on a piece of toast, then I had a second piece of toast with 1/2 tbls whipped peanut butter and half a cut up banana on top. I figured if I was still hungry after all of that I’d eat the other half of the banana but when I was picking up my plate to take my food with me to the couch I couldn’t resist picking up the left over half of the banana. I ended up eating the banana first and omg it was soooooo good! I mean, bananas are good under normal circumstances but eating one after over a week of eating pretty much nothing but Weetabix cereal, it was like a flavour party in my mouth lol.

I just sat and savoured that banana 😀

Now, I started off with what I think of as a good choice for a first meal on the new meds. Simple, tasty, multiple food groups – and I ate it slowly keeping most of my senses focused inwards to my stomach just waiting to detect any pain or unhappy sensation so I could stop eating asap…is it a little sad that eating brings fear now? *thoughtful face* I am never one to take the totally safe route though, sigh, so I also had a cup of tea with me. I have had NO caffeine since this whole ulcer thing happened cause duuuude, caffeine+ulcer=massive pain! After I finished the food I started sipping the tea…at first it seemed ok and I was all ready to celebrate but before I was able to drink half the tea it happened…it started with some stomach clenching, a squeezing sensation, then bam! Pain! and the unhappy gurglings of a pissed off ulcer. Erg! stupid.stupid.stupid me. *rolls eyes* I immediately stopped the tea intake and swapped to a glass of milk and then some water lol. Can you say Damage Control? 😛

The rest of yesterday was a bust cause the pain from the tea didn’t really go away, it stayed low level but was always there. blerg. Because of that I ate stupidly lol. Those who have had ulcers know that a lot of people gain weight when they have an ulcer cause they tend to keep eating in an attempt to alleviate the pain but the food in the stomach is what is causing the pain…mean little cycle that. shrug. So, once the pain kicked in I kept wanting to eat, luckily (luckily?!) I’ve been dealing with this for over a week so I know eating will just make it hurt more sooooo I tried to be careful but really, I wasn’t lol.

Today I took a new approach. I started my day with the dreaded Weetabix cereal (yup, back to that again) but I topped it with cut up nectarine, yum! I only needed half of the nectarine cut up so I ate the other half after I finished the cereal. I made tea again, I can’t help it!, but with the awareness I probably wouldn’t get to drink even half of it, this time I stopped drinking before the pain could happen and I chased the tea with a glass of water so yah for me beating the ulcer! Yippee! lol.

I found that I was getting hungrier sooner then I normally would, after about 1.5 hrs or so instead of 3 but I think that’s cause (1) I’ve been half starved for over a week and my body is pissed and (2) I’m eating smaller amounts at a time so it’s not enough to keep me full for 3 hours. As a result I ended up having a snack of yogurt, then a meal of veggie soup with two pieces of bread with margarine on them and a Weight Watchers lemon cake thingy (fyi, the cake thing was way good!). Then I went to boxing, then I had half a fajita premade salad topped with half a cut up chicken breast. 🙂

All of that used up 19.5 points and I get 20 a day. I wanted something as a sweet but I’m much more aware of my stomach now and what it can handle and I knew eating a chocolate something or other would make it unhappy (sadness) so instead I made a cup of cocoa (which might seem weird but it’s made with milk so it’s actually quite soothing) and I had a package of Weight Watchers sourdough pretzels. I probably could have done without the pretzels but, well, I don’t have a good excuse for why I ate them…shrug, it’s me, I just ate them. lol.

So I’ve eaten 5.5 of the 7 exercise points I have earned…could’ve been worse I s’pose. 😛

Another happy thing (on par with being able to eat normal food again!) is that I have been able to exercise again, wOOt! I got to go to Dragon Boating this past monday and I boxed today! 😀 I can’t believe I am so happy I got to exercise but I am. lol. I only managed one boxing class last week and no dragon boating so it’s great that this week I got to go boating and boxing – and neither time did I end up doubled over in pain or feeling like I was gonna pass out (like last week’s boxing class) 😀

It seems I am fairly back to normal…kinda…I’m getting wicked heartburn late evenings, something I have never had before, but I’m hoping that goes away after I’ve been on the drugs a bit longer. I didn’t realize heartburn was so uncomfie, and I apologize for all the times I saw heartburn meds ads and scoffed at people who said they needed drugs for heartburn, it really is nasty and heartburn sufferers now have my total and complete sympathy…hmm, I just realized it’s 12:39am and no heartburn…maybe mine has gone away?? Oooooh, here’s hoping! *crosses fingers*crosses toes*crosses eyes…wait, that doesn’t work, I can’t do that lol 😛

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I’m an Ostrich

29 Aug

this is me...only with thinner legs lol

Alrighty, so I have this tendency to hide from things I really don’t wanna know about. If I know I am way broke I won’t sign in to my bank account cause I don’t wanna see the balance, if I get a bill in the mail I know I can’t afford to pay I don’t open it…stuff like that. So, this past week when I ate those double chocolate drumsticks I didn’t even glance at the nutritional information let alone calculate how many points each drumstick is…I just hide from the information lol.

It’s stupid, I know, cause it’s not like my not looking at the bank balance, bill or nutritional  information means that it’s not there. And when I eat something I know is really bad for me but I don’t know the points value of the food I feel way guilty after I have eaten it cause I imagine the food item must be like 10 points or higher…I tend to estimate on the high side lol.

Well, today I decided to bite the bullet and read the nutritional information for the drumsticks. The only reason I did this was cause I still had one left and since starting today I am back to being a good little Weight Watcher and tracking my food and only eating my daily points I had to know how many points they are so I can know when I will be able to eat that final drumstick. 😛

Turns out they are nowhere near as bad as I thought they were, each drumstick is 4 points which yes, not a good use of 4 points but not nearly as bad as the 8-11 points I was guesstimating them to be. Yah! 🙂

I decided to eat that last drumstick today cause it would get them out of the place and no longer be tempting me and also cause I exercised today so I could eat it without messing up my points so I figured might as well. shrug.

So today I ate:

1 Cup oatmeal = 2 points

1 Activia yogurt = 2 points

1 light babybell = 1 point

21 grams mini breton crackers = 2 points

2 turkey hot dogs = 4 points

1 Cup Maple Flavoured baked beans = 4 points

1 double chocolate drumstick = 4 points

1 small spoonful of Nutella = 2 points

Total points eaten = 21

Earned exercise points = 6

Yes, I ate 1 point over my daily points but I hiked and dragon boated today which earned me 6 exercise points so I don’t feel bad about that 1 point extra that I ate.

I’m not gonna say that I am going to stop being an ostrich about all things, but I’m glad I got my head out of the sand about the drumsticks cause I don’t feel quite so bad about eating them now. 🙂

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I Won SILVER!

20 Aug

My Silver Medal!

Oh yah baby! We won Silver!!! wOOt! wOOt! 😀 😀 😀 *fist pump*

*sidenote: aaaaahhhhhh! I wrote an entire post about today and when I went and pressed Publish wordpress deleted everything but the picture! my second drafts are never as much fun as my first drafts, sigh*

Today I competed at the Stevenston Dragon Boat Festival, it was held in Richmond BC. 😀

The entire day was soooooo awesome I don’t even know where to begin! 😀

KL came to my place at 8am, I was awake at 6:20am after a measly 3 hours of bad sleep, ugh. Not the best start to a long day but oh well! I wanted to make sure I was up early enough to get ready and have time to eat a proper breakfast, my thinking was that starting my day with a healthy breakfast would help fuel my body through at least the first race and would help me eat properly for the rest of the day. I’m really glad I chose to eat breakfast at home cause when we got to the racing site all the food vendors and the majority of the food my teammates brought was unhealthy. At our tent we had timbits, donuts, cookies, banana bread, cranberry ginger bread, bagels…to be fair, we also had veggies (which I brought), some fruit – cause our coach made us promise to bring bananas (potassium = goooooood! lol), there was also a bit of grapes and a watermelon…so, ok, not all of the food was bad but most of it was!

We had to race in 4 heats, the first two were 200 metres and the second two were 500 metres. After the first race we all got back to the tent and dive bombed the food table, lol, this happens after every race! I don’t really understand why, like under 3 minutes of intense exertion has totally wiped us out and we must immediately refuel or risk faaaaading away. teehee. We had less then an hour until our next race so I nixed the idea of eating the salad I brought for my lunch and instead ate 1 C of strawberries and 1 light babybell, both of which I brought, lol. It’s weird, the entire day, I never felt hungry. When I did eat it was usually some fruit and I was only eating that to help keep me hydrated, shrug, ah well, doesn’t seem to have hurt me in the end. 🙂

The third race was to determine who qualified for the finals, for some reason if your team came in first or third you would go on to medal races but if you finished second or fourth you went to, um, shoot, what were they called? consolation races? that doesn’t seem quite right…basically, you would get to race one more time but not win anything, shrug. I don’t know why it wasn’t the first and second placed teams in those heats that went on to compete for a medal but hey, who am I to question? lol

For our fourth race all the competing teams were ready to go when an official called over the steerer and drummer from each team and they were all having an official looking convo. Then the official turned around and told us that two of the teams competing had “sandbagged” to get in to this heat and to make things fair teams had to swap steerers and drummers! There was a massive uproar! The drummer is the person who is responsible for keeping the team in sync, informing the team when we are switching to a different type of stroke and also they are the person who yells at us the whole way to keep us going – these people are NOT interchangeable! Turns out this was the officials idea of a joke, odd sense of humour that man has. *rolls eyes* A good side benefit to this joke was we were all riled up and ready to take that excess energy we had immediately built up to fight this unfairness out on the water. Sadly though, our team lost all that riled up energy because it took us so long to be able to get in our boat, by the time we were in our boat we were more worried about if we were going to miss our race! Ack!

Some of the teams are there for fun, they aren’t as competitive as the other teams, not to say they don’t work their asses off,  they do! They just aim to have fun and enjoy the experience where as some of us (my team! lol) are there to WIN!! lol Some of the fun teams are geared towards making the sport accesible to people with disabilities. Like last racing weekend, there was a team that for every seeing rower there was a non-seeing rower. This time, the team that was vacating the boat that we were supposed to use for our race was a MS team. Not all the members have MS (from my understanding) but most do, those who have advanced MS were having extreme difficulties getting out of the boat. What normally takes a team about 1 minute to accomplish took this team closer to 10 minutes to do. Since the races are scheduled down to the second for start times this is a problem. I don’t want to sound like I am complaining, I think it’s great that the sport is open to pretty much anyone who wants to try, but this delay put us at a disadvantage within our division because all the other teams we were racing against were already sitting at the start line while we hadn’t even left the dock (which is at the finish line).

Usually, to get to the start line you row casually, you have to row 500 metres to get there and you don’t want to wear yourself out! You take your time, on the way your team will probably practice your starting strokes (that’s usually your first 30 strokes), then go back to rowing casually, this way you’re warmed up and pumped to go when you get there. You always want to be the first team at the start line because that means you have the most resting time before your race starts, you can relax, get in the zone, do what you need to do in order to prep yourself for what is to come. We were soooo late getting to the start line that we had to row faster then normal to get to the start line, then we right away had to turn around and get in our lane, as soon as we were turned the announcer was calling alignment and bam! we were off! We were yelling at each other right before the race started “no pain!” “no tired!” because of course we were all in pain, and we were all tired but we had to work past it, we had to act as if the next 500 metres decided everything – which they did, lol.

Just goes to show you what training and perseverance will get ya! Well, that and I told the team that bronze just doesn’t look good against my skin tone so we had to at least get a silver! 😉

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4:6

12 Aug

Fact of the Day: the magnetic compass was invented in China around 2000 years ago

I was just watching Weird Or What? and that little fun fact was shared with the tv viewers so I thought I’d share it with you just because. 🙂

So in the past 4 days I have exercised 6 times – how crazy weird is that? I don’t know if this is something I can maintain but I think I am gonna try. 🙂 I used to make a tentative goal of exercising every second day, then once I was maintaining that fairly decently I upped the ante to exercising in some way everyday, now I am thinking of changing that exercise goal to hiking at least 5 times a week, going to boxerfit at least twice and once my dragon boating season is over upping the boxerfit to 3 or more times a week. I think it is doable…maybe…lol

Here is how my exercising went this week:

Monday – on the road, did nothing

Tuesday – hiked

Wednesday – hiked and went to boxerfit

Thursday – boxerfit

Friday – hiked and dragon boated

Fairly decent. 🙂

And what’s even better is that Tuesday thru Friday I ate my daily points and only the occaisional exercise point – this of course is in an effort to make up for the Saturday Sunday and Monday where I was in AB and road tripping back to BC.

I’m not sure how my weigh in will turn out since I ate so badly two weeks ago and did no exercise and part of this past week was a continuation of that. I’m hoping my upping the exercise and being really careful with the food will help to counter act all of that but here’s where confusion may happen. If I am up on the scale is it fat or muscle? I have no idea how I am supposed to figure that out…*confused face* Ah well, weigh in isn’t until Sunday cause I have a photo shoot Saturday at noon so I’ll be up and out of the house way earlier then my normal weigh in time so looks like I have an extra day to wonder how the scale will treat me…*rolls eyes*

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