Health and Gardening
Health
I haven't felt like writing here for the last few days. Lots going on in my head but nothing I want to write about. I've been feeling pretty down, apart from being happy with my new way of eating and increased exercise. I love SparkPeople (www.sparkpeople.com); it's a great site for keeping track of what I'm eating and my exercise. I've never been conscientious about tracking my food consumption and determining its nutritional content, including calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Every other attempt I've made to manage my weight and health has focused on fat content and overall amount of food consumed only. I've read numerous places that keeping a food diary is one of the most effective ways to lose and maintain weight. My biggest difficulties right now are getting enough protein and overcoming my urges to eat in the evenings. I suspect I should be eating more protein in the mornings and that this would help overcome both difficulties.
For exercise, I've been walking every day, and now I've incorporated yoga and weights on alternating days. I need to be very careful with all of these exercises not to strain my connective tissue too much or I'll have to stop until it heals. It's a difficult thing to do: to push hard enough to increase fitness while not pushing so hard that it over-stresses and injures already sensitive areas. For example, the walking is aggravating my bone spurs in my feet from my psoriatic arthritis. The bone spurs and the related tendon inflammation are not going to go away so I have to exercise with them, even though the common medical advice is to rest until they are healed. I've been stretching my calf muscles more so that there is less tension on the tendons at the back of my foot, and icing to reduce inflammation. The challenge is to keep on exercising but not to the point that the pain incapacitates me. Same thing with the yoga: my hip bursitis is a long standing problem that yoga can aggravate so I have to find ways to work around it. There are certain poses that put stress on my outer hips and I'm avoiding those, while focusing on poses that will build the muscles in the areas surrounding my outer hips.
Garden
I have been getting very frustrated because something has been nibbling on my pea sprouts and my baby lettuces. I found some chicken wire and bent it into crude row covers to protect them both. That seems to be working. My next step is to get some additional material to cover other seeds that I plan to start outside soon and my transplants. Last year, something ate many of my squash seedlings and I don't want that to happen again.
I haven't felt like writing here for the last few days. Lots going on in my head but nothing I want to write about. I've been feeling pretty down, apart from being happy with my new way of eating and increased exercise. I love SparkPeople (www.sparkpeople.com); it's a great site for keeping track of what I'm eating and my exercise. I've never been conscientious about tracking my food consumption and determining its nutritional content, including calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Every other attempt I've made to manage my weight and health has focused on fat content and overall amount of food consumed only. I've read numerous places that keeping a food diary is one of the most effective ways to lose and maintain weight. My biggest difficulties right now are getting enough protein and overcoming my urges to eat in the evenings. I suspect I should be eating more protein in the mornings and that this would help overcome both difficulties.
For exercise, I've been walking every day, and now I've incorporated yoga and weights on alternating days. I need to be very careful with all of these exercises not to strain my connective tissue too much or I'll have to stop until it heals. It's a difficult thing to do: to push hard enough to increase fitness while not pushing so hard that it over-stresses and injures already sensitive areas. For example, the walking is aggravating my bone spurs in my feet from my psoriatic arthritis. The bone spurs and the related tendon inflammation are not going to go away so I have to exercise with them, even though the common medical advice is to rest until they are healed. I've been stretching my calf muscles more so that there is less tension on the tendons at the back of my foot, and icing to reduce inflammation. The challenge is to keep on exercising but not to the point that the pain incapacitates me. Same thing with the yoga: my hip bursitis is a long standing problem that yoga can aggravate so I have to find ways to work around it. There are certain poses that put stress on my outer hips and I'm avoiding those, while focusing on poses that will build the muscles in the areas surrounding my outer hips.
Garden
I have been getting very frustrated because something has been nibbling on my pea sprouts and my baby lettuces. I found some chicken wire and bent it into crude row covers to protect them both. That seems to be working. My next step is to get some additional material to cover other seeds that I plan to start outside soon and my transplants. Last year, something ate many of my squash seedlings and I don't want that to happen again.
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