Running and dreaming (but not TOO much)

This isn't me. Too skinny. But the background looks reeeeealllly similar to my route. Thanks to this blog post for the pic: http://www.allthingsheartandhome.com/2009/08/20/keep-moving-woman/

I haven’t hiked in months.  I have recently, though, started jogging around my neighborhood.  I love getting out in a natural setting, and my feet take less of a beating on dirt than on asphalt.  But, I had to drive to my hike-location-of-preference.  Now, my jog starts roughly fifteen minutes after I roll out of bed, no car needed.  Less travel time to get out means I can wake up a half-hour later, spend more time hoofing it, and get back home earlier.

Previously, I was mostly concerned with arriving back home before my hubby left for work.  However, we were having trouble with our littlest one, Fiala, getting out of bed early and wreaking havoc while my husband was getting ready for work and I was out hiking.

We live in a fairly hilly location, which is unusual for Phoenix;  most everywhere around here is flat.  So, even though it’s on asphalt, I can still go for a challenging, scenic run, with virtually no traffic, which is almost as good as hiking.  Well, actually, saying “run” is pushing it;  a slow trot, alternating with fast walking.  I hope to work up to a run.  Right now, I’m at about a 14 minute mile, which is lame, even though I can blame some of the slowness on the hills.  I can, right??

According to Map My Run (which is REALLY frustrating to get a handle on;  it took me more than an hour to create a map of my little route, and that’s after I viewed the tutorials), my route is 2.79 miles with an overall 3% grade.  It would have a greater grade percentage if I disincluded the flat part that starts and ends my run, but I guess that would be cheating.

I have to fight my dreams about this whole running thing, though.  Well, not really.  Sort of.  What I mean is that I’ve been out jogging a grand total of about seven times now, and I already have lofty visions of finally completing a marathon.  That’s not a BAD dream, certainly;  it’s one I’ve had for years.  But, I tend to count my chickens before I even have a henhouse, let alone eggs, if that makes sense.  I start thinking in my head about how amazing it would be if I completed  this project — any project — that I can actually start coasting on my dreams instead of actually DOING them.  And, I tend to get discouraged when things don’t turn out as rosily, as rapidly as I’m dreaming.

So, like virtually everything else in my life, this is a plot to strengthen my character, as well as my physical endurance, and hopefully to lose enough fat that I don’t have to pick out my outfit by how well it hides the various bits of chub surrounding my middle section.

Here’s hopin’.

Garden! Honey laundering! Motivated Moms! Obsessed with bread! New glasses! Hiking!

• 

  Rhubarb Chard from Seeds of Change

  I have carrots, green onions, broccoli, and red chard seeds planted in my garden.  I’ll be planting more of everything, plus lettuce and bulb onions, as space allows.  Still growing:  Mexican grey squash (I’ve eaten lots of them, raw, when they’re about 3″ long, right before they turn yellow and die); Yoeme purple string beans (tall and mostly green, but appears to be heat-stressed… some blooms… I’m waiting to see if the plants will do better as the weather cools);  basil (the only thing that’s really thriving;  we eat basil in stuff 4-5x/week now);  tomatoes (loads of blooms, but not really vigorous, strong plants… again, waiting until it cools to reassess);  hot red chile plants (healthy-looking, but small and no blooms).  I’m trying to decide what to do about my ginormous Hopi pumpkin plant.  It is literally spilling out of my raised bed… the squash plant is about 10′ x 4′, and it is taking up so much room that could be used for something else.  The plant appears to be thriving, with huge, green leaves and dozens of blossoms, and it would be a shame to rip out something so vigorous.  But, the pumpkins grow about 2-3″ big and then die, much like my Mexican grey squash.  My husband thinks it’s due to the heat and that I should give it some time.  I’m trying not to think about all the other, possibly more fruitful veggies I could plant in the space that dumb pumpkin is hogging.

• PLEASE READ this article on honey.  Please.  Who knew that honey was such a controversial topic??  It is imperative to your safety that you buy honey that is a product of the USA, or at least the western hemisphere.  Honey from China — tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals — is saturating the American market, because honey from China is banned in Europe.  “Some of the largest and most long-established U.S. honey packers are knowingly buying mislabeled, transshipped or possibly altered honey so they can sell it cheaper than those companies who demand safety, quality and rigorously inspected honey. … Almost 60 percent of what was imported – 123 million pounds – came from Asian countries – traditional laundering points for Chinese honey. This included 45 million pounds from India alone.”  HONEY SMUGGLING.  Who knew?
• 

  "Like" OSC on Facebook for new post updates, quick responses to any questions and comments, plus additional tidbits.

  Perhaps it’s too early to make a true judgement, but Motivated Moms seems to be working great.  It’s oddly helpful to be accountable to a sheet of paper which is waiting for me to tick the boxes.  The system is a real change for me, because instead of cleaning the bathroom in one fell swoop, it has you clean the toilet one day, the mirrors another day, the sink the following day, etc.  However, breaking each task into 2-to-20 minute segments makes each of them more do-able for me.  Plus, I find it difficult to disappear into my bedroom for an hour and a half to clean the master bath from lighting fixtures to tile;  I just don’t have that large chunk of time often enough, and I just can’t leave my kids unsupervised for that long.  But, pretty much everyone can function on their own if mom is only “gone” for 20 minute segments.  It’s just now noon, and I’ve already accomplished more than I would in an entire typical day.  Plus, I’ve gone on Facebook, done some gardening, made a loaf of bread, and busted a few heads.  Not really “busted”.  I’ve applied some mothering. 

• Speaking of bread, I’m an obsessed baker again.  I’m really motivated to find a recipe that WORKS, simply.  I have been making my Best Ever Gluten-Free Flour Mix for the last couple of months, consistently having it on hand to whip up some cupcakes or muffins or pancakes, and that has been wonderful and helpful.  Though it is a really versatile mix, I haven’t been able to successfully make sandwich bread with it, and I’m determined to come up with a bread recipe that will work using that flour mix.  Simple = sustainable.  I want to be able to daily (or nearly so) bake bread, and I know I won’t do it if I have to get out twenty billion ingredients, or remember a complicated process.  So far, the results are tasty, but too dense.  I’m tinkering with everything tinker-able — amount and kind of liquid, oven vs. breadmaker, amount of sugar and yeast, amount of rising time, etc.
• 

  They make me look hipper than I actually am.

  I got new glasses. 

• I went out hiking, early Saturday morning, with two friends, Cristi and Wendy.  It was the first time I hiked in about six weeks.  The hike wasn’t particularly strenuous, but it was good to just get out and get moving again.  What with the heat, a summer Bible study, my garden, our vacation, and simply getting out of the habit, my hiking went by the wayside.  I’m re-motivated now. 

Just about everything but parenting

• Writing:  If you have read here for a while, you may remember that much of my 2010 and part of 2011 was taken up with ghostwriting a book.  The book is now available for sale — here at Brushed by God — and soon elsewhere. 
• School:  During the school year, it seems like a genius plan to work for six weeks then take off a week.  With these regular breaks, my house gets clean, special trips happen, everyone breathes a deep breath.  But, ’round about this time of year, when just about everyone else is done with school and we still have four weeks left, it seems less than brilliant.  We’re not finished until June 10.
• Garden:  Thanks to repaired irrigation tubing and some short, cute fencing, my garden now really looks like a garden, according to my husband who blessedly did the irrigation and fence work.    However, the fence does not keep out our dog, who has an odd — and maddening — affinity for corn plants.  My corn, some of them 18″ high, does not like it, either.  The garden sits in a side yard, and we may have to run a sturdier barrier from house to side-fence to make the garden dog-proof.  Otherwise, the garden is taking spectacular shape.
• Fitness:  I am now feeling stronger after nearly three weeks of hiking 3.5 miles, three times a week.  This makes me happy.  My “fat” jeans are looser, too, even though I’ve really lost no weight.  I guess that’s from muscle gain?  I don’t know.
• 

  My bodybuilding cousin Romney, military wife and mother of two.

  Random extended family thoughts:  I’ve been reflecting on how widely differing my extended family is.  It’s really a cross-section of American society in general…  Just amongst my cousins (including both sides of my family), one is a nun, one is gay, another just placed fourth in a body-building competition — it has been interesting to watch her really transform in the last 18 months,  one is a single dad, one lives in a neo-hippie commune, one is teaching English in Japan, one is a theater professor, some are academics, some are blue-collar workers, some are Christians (in various manifestations), some are pagan, some are married, some not…  Lots of really disparate interests and paths of life.  I find it really fascinating.  Are most families similar to mine in their dissimilarities??  I don’t think there’s enough closeness in my extended family, and I’m sure there’s some cause-and-effect somewhere in there, but I’m not sure of the root…  I’m sure I’m part of the problem, too, sadly.

• Church stuff:  Over the summer, I’ll be attending a Beth Moore Bible study (the updated version of Breaking Free).  Yesterday, my pastor’s wife asked me if I would, during one of the weeks’ meetings, give a little testimony based on the story I wrote last week, on the story of my son Wesley’s life, and how God really saved my life (literally) through him, when I thought it would kill me.  I was really pleased with her request.  I printed out and edited the original story because I have to hold it to seven minutes, which required me to cut it roughly in half.  That’s OK.  My writing is generally too bloated and filled with unnecessary asides, anyway.  I have pared. 
• Household stuff:  My hubby installed a “new” microwave over the weekend.  Our “old” one was just 5½ years old, but literally falling apart –  the vent broke off and had already been replaced (then broke again), the door handle completely broke off…  Replacing the door was going to cost us nearly $200.  Ack!  We couldn’t do that.  Thankfully, he works for a homebuilder, and we were able to get one out of a model home for less than half of retail.  Cool!  So, it’s five years old or so, but it’s never been used.  A friend of ours has the same model and is very happy with it.  I now have to figure out how best to clean stainless steel, as it is the first stainless appliance in our home.  Small complaint, though;  I’m happy to have a functional microwave.
• Birds:  A Northern Cardinal (and today, his mate) has been visiting my back yard for the last three mornings.  Cardinals are not rare in the Phoenix area, but they are uncommon, and in the 5+ years we’ve been in our home, this is the first time that we’ve had a daily visitor.  Mr. Cardinal has pleasantly interrupted my mornings. 
• Other cardinals:  My husband was asked to design a home — like a manse — for a cardinal in California.  I’m very proud of him.  It’s a modest 1600 s.f. house on a very narrow lot.  My man is brilliant and thinks in 3D.  He whipped out the plan in one day.
• My mother:  In sad news, my mom is back in the hospital.  I can’t remember how much I blogged about it last year, but in July, we nearly lost her.  She has Marfan Syndrome, and her skeleton is collapsing, which has given her decreased space for her lungs (and other organs).  Additionally, half of her diaphragm is paralyzed.  Then, she got double pneumonia.  She recovered, to our great relief.  She is a stubborn lady, and that can pay dividends when fighting illness.  She has lost a tremendous amount of weight and is very frail, and has been placed on oxygen “as needed”.  In the last month or so, her need for oxygen has been 24/7, with her oxygen saturation dipping into the 60% range or even down to 50% if she’s off of oxygen for even a short while.  After a doctor appointment yesterday, the doctor sent her straight to the E.R.  She has double pneumonia again, and is correspondingly hypoxic.  She was supposed to have major surgery (an estimated 12 hour ordeal) on the 25th of this month to resection her spine and to put in metal supports inside her ribcage area.  This is a risky procedure even for a healthy person;  for her, the doctors had given about a 60% chance for surviving surgery, mostly because of the extremely mushy shape of her arteries — she’s had two AAA repairs and one femoral artery replaced already due to aneurysms.  However, the surgery is really her only hope — aside from miraculous healing — for longer-term survival, since right now, she’s slowly being suffocated.  With this bout of pneumonia, the doctors have indefinitely shelved the surgery.  She’s crushed about that, but — unlike past stays — she’s relieved to be back in the hospital.  Normally, she is an unwilling patient.  I can’t decide if it’s a good thing or not that she’s happy to be in the hospital.  Your prayers would be greatly appreciated.

Summer panic… and peace

Right about this time every year, there gets to be a tight feeling in my chest, which I have to fight for… oh, about five months.  It’s a bit like claustrophobia, but it’s more along the lines of heat-o-phobia.  Truly, I despise summer in the desert.  Some people really love the heat and thrive in it.  That, however, is not me.  I have worked hard to find things to appreciate about the place I live so that I’m not living with a crappy attitude and wishing to be elsewhere, half of my life.  My husband is a native, his dad is a native (which is REALLY rare;  the Phoenix area is a valley of transients)…  My mom and stepdad are here, my sister and brother-in-law are here, my niece is here… plus, we truly have the most amazing church where we both serve and are fed.  Not to mention my husband’s fabulous job that he’s been at for 19 years.  It’s highly unlikely that we’ll be leaving any time soon.  I have come to value the benefits to living here, apart from the weather, which, any time I really let myself think about it, I could pretty easily conjure up some tears.  I mean, I really despise summer in the desert.

But, I will not dwell on the endless 110°+ days;  I will, instead, continue to look for things that make the desert tolerable or even pleasant, and fight the heat-o-phobia and its accompanying tears which threaten to steal my peace.

Several things have made the transition into summer easier for me this year:

1. There have only been a handful of 100° days so far.  Today, as I write, we have been the beneficiary of some low-pressure front, or something like that, and the temps are supposed to top out in the 70s.  Yesterday’s high was 80°.  I know that God doesn’t allow these sort of days solely for me, but I like to think of them as Him giving me a bit of hope and reprieve, letting me know that I can make it, and that it’s not ALL oven-like misery.
2. I have been waking earlier.  Much earlier.  A couple of weeks ago, I started hiking a mountain — hill, more like it — that is nearby.  I wake at 5:30 a.m., am on the trail by 6:00, and home by about 7:15 just in time to help my hubby gather his lunch for the day, his to-go mug of coffee, and to kiss him goodbye.  The first day I did the early-morning hike, Martin said, “You could do that every day and it would be OK with me.”  Other than a spunky 2yo who sometimes wakes way too early and won’t stay in bed, and has the power to open the fridge and take out everything she can’t eat and have a surreptitious binge whilst Daddy is in the shower and Mommy is not yet home, it works really well.  And, I have the great feeling of becoming fit and healthier, as well as breathing in the cool, early morning air and being there to (almost) greet the sunrise.  I do a balloon-shaped trail that is about 3.6 miles, savoring the temperatures that are in the 60s or 70s…  It has been wonderful.  And, somehow, it’s SO MUCH EASIER for this night owl to roll out of bed at 5:30 for a hike, instead of, say, the stationary bike.
3. 

   I think ours is taller than this, and it's in bloom.

   Our backyard is now over five years old, and the pathetic little saplings have matured and grown into a lush (for the desert) green oasis.  This may not seem like much, but when I’m surrounded by hot, brown, and dry, it’s such a blessing to be able to walk into my back yard and breathe in a little bit o’ GREEN.  The trees are now climbable, and one of them even has a little rope swing attached.  We have two medium (but lovely) fruitless pistachio trees and two large tipu trees.  Wonderful.

4. My garden.  Again, it’s only May, and I got it in a good month later than I should have, so who knows how fruitful it will actually be.  But for now, it’s medicine to my soul to push the dirt around and coax and nurture little plants into being.  Usually once a day (at least), I pull out my kneeling pad and just sit on it, looking at the garden.  Even when there’s nothing to do in it, I feel good looking at it either up close, or just glancing out the window while working in the kitchen.  Over the weekend, my hubby installed soaker tube for the irrigation and put up a little wire fence to keep our dog (and small children) from romping through the tender growth.  He proclaimed, “Now it looks like a real garden.”  I concur.

Not in order of importance

• Wish I lived in Minneapolis!  Well, not really, but if I did, I would DEFINITELY be going to this:  A Procraftinator’s Delight, hosted by one of my favorite bloggers.
• When I was in the process of choosing which college to attend, I automatically disqualified any whose promotional literature had misspellings, glaring grammatical errors, sloppy art layout, etc.  With that in mind, one might be leery of a website called The Best Colleges when it publishes articles rife with the same.  Still.  This article, The World’s 15 Most Extraordinary Homeschoolers, is well worth a read.  Tim Tebow?  Who DOESN’T know he was homeschooled?  The Jonas Brothers?  Knew that, too.  But Condoleezza Rice?  Francis Collins (the evangelical Christian and renowned scientist, appointed by Obama, no less, to be director of the NIH)?  The list is inspiring and profoundly interesting.
• 

  The lift pin assembly

  Weird things make me feel old.  Yesterday, it was the fact that my pressure cooker apparently needs some parts replaced, the gasket and lift pin assembly.  Why does this make me feel ancient?  Because these parts are made of rubber, which becomes brittle (and ineffective) with AGE.  ~sigh~  Finding out that these parts would cost me $21 plus shipping made me a wee bit upset.  Doing some searching to find out that

  • a) a replacement pressure cooker would run me upwards of $50, and
  • b) doing some price comparisons online would save me $10 or so (from here) made me feel slightly better about my purchase.  I still feel old, though.
• I am THRILLED to report that Fiala is doing much better. The infection on her face is gone, though it’s having a hard time clearing up, as she keeps scratching the still-healing spots.  The bed situation that I wrote about a week ago or so finally came to pass;  I set up both girls in their new beds yesterday — Audrey in her new-to-us twin bed, and Fiala in the toddler bed that used to be Audrey’s.  Fiala fell out of bed once last night, in spite of a guard rail, and she did not nap well — well, didn’t nap at ALL — in her new bed yesterday, but that was really due to the visit of our beloved nephew Nick and his darling girlfriend PLUS it being a new bed PLUS us working on potty-training PLUS her having diarrhea every 10-15 minutes because of horrid Augmentin due to her ear infection.  I don’t think I wrote about that.  Her eardrum burst on Friday.  Apparently, the bacteria which caused it were not covered by the antibiotics that she’d already been on for more than two weeks.  In spite of the fact that the Solaray BabyLife probiotics that we have for her contain rice maltodextrin, and she’s previously demonstrated that rice is an allergy problem for her wee body, I had decided that an eczema outbreak from the maltodextrin was the lesser of two evils, even though her skin is finally starting to clear up from the six weeks?  two months? of outbreak that she’s suffered through.  ANYWAY.  I was remarking to a friend that the “good news” from her having diarrhea is that it seemed to be giving her a greater awareness of her… elimination process, of which she was blissfully unaware, which made potty-training heretofore impossible.  We’re not all the way there yet with toilet adeptness, but we’re getting there.  I have hope.
• Having local gluten-free friends ROCKS.  These may seem minor to most of you, but I am so thankful for:
  • a neighbor, whom I “met” through the Phoenix Celiac Yahoo group (and subsequently discovered we live a couple of streets away from each other), dropped off a darling little box of goodies:  three truffles, some oat-almond candy crunch, a mini pumpkin pie, and a mini cheesecake.  Usually, treats received from loving friends and well-meaning neighbors receive wistful glances from me, as I give them to my two gluten-eating children, Ethan and Grant.  I can’t recall ever having something dropped off to our home where I could eat every single thing.  I meant to only sample the goodies, but, I confess, I schnarfed down ALL of them.
  • Last night, at the grocery store, I called my friend Kim.  We live across town from each other, but she feels closer.    Even though she was sick, the poor raspy-voiced thing, we chatted about teff and millet, and grinding our own grain, and what grain works well in which application, etc.  She looked up some stuff online for me, as I shopped.  I had a goofy grin the whole time, because it is SO NICE to be able to just pick up the phone and talk with someone about things that are akin to a foreign language to most people…
• I am thankful for:  At least $300 in new or nearly-new jeans, given to me by my sweet friend, Brenda, who had been given them by her sister.  Her sister had recently lost a lot of weight, and now, two pairs of Lucky jeans, a pair of Guess jeans, and five or six other pair, are now nestled happily in my drawer.    I’m set.  That’s a good thing for me, because I wear jeans virtually every day of my life.  I have to lose more weight for some of them to fit better, but that’s a good thing, right?  Motivation.

Karen, the non-girly-girl-DVD-aerobic-dancer

There are many times I just don’t feel adequately “girly.”

One of them, I must say, is when I got a DVD program to do some step aerobics to, nearly three years ago, now.  I was looking for something by which I could exercise without leaving home.  I love to walk/run, but that’s logistically difficult to figure out.

• Running in the early morning would require that I get up early.  I am not a morning person, and in order to get myself enough rest, I’d have to go to bed earlier.  The thought of losing that extra nightly hour or so that I frequently spend by myself, after everyone else has gone to bed, makes me twitchy.  I’m an introvert, and that’s my recharge time.
• Running in mid-day is becoming more of a possibility, as my youngest is now two years old, and my oldest is 13, and I can leave everyone alone at home for short periods of time, occasionally.  However, the best time for running would be in the afternoon when the little girls are napping, and that time valuable in a lot of ways that I’m loathe to give up.
• I really enjoy running in the evening after dinner, but that decreases my time with my husband, and would add even more evenings where he puts the youngest children in bed.  I like putting my girls in bed, and feel sad when they don’t have Mommy to pray for them and read them a book and tuck them in…  Daddy does a great job, but we already have two nights weekly (small group and grocery shopping nights) when he puts them in bed, and I just don’t want to add any more to the mix.

Thus, I thought the DVD thing would be a good idea.  But, lemme tell you, the idea of having SIX DVDs of really intricate, difficult, strenuous steps, set to music, to memorize and do….  Golly.  That stressed me out.  I forever felt like I was behind the learning curve, could never quite get the steps right, and felt more than inadequate, stumbling around the family room.  Ugh.  I thought, “This should be fun.  I think most women would think this is fun.  I sure don’t.”  It was easy to find reasons to not break out the DVDs.

However, my “diet” thingie had plateaued, even as I continued to decrease the number of carbs I was consuming daily.  I was down to 75 grams.  That’s a really small number of carbs.  I was micro-careful, and still only losing about half a pound a week, at most.  Two weeks, in spite of really careful eating, I lost nothing.  I found myself completely unwilling to go lower than 75g.  I don’t want to starve myself.  That’s not healthy, and it’s really not sustainable.

I began to see that exercise was what was needed to pull me off of that schlumpy plateau.

Even before the diet, I knew I needed to be more active, to exercise.  I am 37 years old, and am really starting to see how easy it is to slide downhill, physically.  I want to be able to hike with my kids without twisting an ankle due to really poor muscle tone in my legs.  I want to not get winded simply by sitting up in bed, or leaning over to pick something up off of the floor!!

So, those DVDs, and the incline step box kept taunting me.

Instead, I decided to post a wanted ad on Freecycle, to see if anyone had a stationary bike they wanted to get rid of.

This is the exact model I have, but it looks like it's unavailable to purchase any more.

Voila!  I had a recumbent bike by that night.  That was Monday, a week ago.  I have since put about 45 miles on the thing, and look forward to “working out” on it.  I’ve snuck a few two-a-days in, as well.  I must like monotony.    I’d so much rather just hop on this thing and pedal mindlessly than have to learn endless dancey moves to a dumb DVD host who never gets winded and who has a fixed, gleaming white smile and an impossibly perfect body.

On the bike, I’ve been doing the model where you start slow, then ramp up effort until you’re maxed out, then bring it back down and slowly build again.

It works for me.

What I’m trying to establish with my kids is that, after I get the little girls dressed for the day, and get everyone started on breakfast, I lock the door of my room and do my 15-20 minutes on the bike, shower and dress, then come out to find everyone almost done with their chores and just about ready to start school.    It hasn’t quite worked out that perfectly, but that’s the goal.

After just a week, I feel tighter.  Less flabby.  Stronger.  In six weeks of total diet time, I’ve only list 8.4 lbs, but I’m really starting to feel like I’m seeing some fruit from my efforts.  Clothes are fitting just a little better, and I just feel healthier.

This past week, the week of the Advent of the Recumbent Bike, I lost 1.4 lbs, and that was even with sampling some of the candy from my kids’ “Harvest Carnival” Halloween alternative party, AND not having a kitchen scale.  I had been meticulously weighing and documenting everything I ate, but I left my scale at my friend Kim’s house, when we had our magnificent cooking day.  So, I was without a scale for a week.  I got a new one, this past Friday.  I was tempted — highly tempted! — by the $17 glass-and-stainless electronic scale.  But, instead, I spent $3 on a little plastic version, very much akin to my previous scale.

This week, I’m trying to figure out the whole carb + bike thing.  I’m still shooting for 75 grams daily.  Seventy-five grams pretty much equals absolutely no grains and no sugar.  It’s a healthy existence, but it will be nice to see if the bike will give me some leeway for days when (a one ounce portion!) of Stax blares its Siren’s call and I give in…

So.  With bike and scale, I feel very much back on track, and with renewed motivation.  I feel like a nerdy dieter, happy about the bike and scale.  I also feel relieved that I can now sell my videos and incline step on Craigslist with a clear conscience. 

I found my yogurt!!

Well, Chris, this won’t count for one of those meaty posts where you walk away thinking deep thoughts…

But I keep forgetting to share that I found my ideal yogurt:

In a post a week ago, I mentioned that I needed to find a healthier yogurt that was around 20 carbs each, not artificially sweetened, and that wouldn’t break the bank.  Voila!!  As if made especially for me, in waltzes Cascade Fresh.  All-natural, labeled gluten-free, fruit-juice sweetened, and 100% cultured.

A pet peeve of mine, lately, is fake yogurt.  Read the ingredients of your yogurt.  If it says something like, “milk, cultured milk, gelatin, corn starch…” that means that PART of your yogurt is actually yogurt — the cultured part –  and the other part is simply thickened regular milk.

Very briefly, yogurt cultures “eat” lactose (milk sugar), which produces lactic acid.  Lactic acid both gives the yogurt its tart taste, and causes the milk protein (casein) to coagulate, thereby thickening.  So, if you have true yogurt, there is decreased sugar and no need for thickening agents.  For the sake of full disclosure, many of Cascade Fresh’s flavors have fruit on the bottom, and THAT is thickened with tapioca.

Much the same process as when cheese is made, since the culturing bacteria eat the lactose a reduced-sugar state results, and, correspondingly, fewer carbs.  But, when a company takes uncultured milk and adds corn starch to thicken it — presumably so that it won’t be so tart — and throws loads of sugar into it to make it palatable (to American tastes), not only do you get the carbs from the added sugar, you get carbs from the lactose and corn starch which shouldn’t be there in the first place!*

Hrmph.

I find this offensive both to my Eat Real Food standards, and to my current diet, which needs fewer carbs.

So, like I said, Cascade Fresh is made-to-order.  Well, not really, but it fits all my needs.  At a local natural grocery store (Sprouts), the regular price is $0.79 per 6 ounce container.  When I went shopping last week, though, they were on sale for $0.59 each, which is about the normal price for a Yoplait.**  Each container has about 20-23 carbs.  And, as mentioned, entirely fruit juice-sweetened, natural colors and flavors…. Perfect.

I prefer whole milk yogurt, and I see on their website that the company does produce a few flavors…  but I didn’t see any at my store.  I’ll have to keep an eye out for them. 

——————-

*In a similar fashion, Yoplait Greek yogurt is not actually Greek yogurt.  From what I can discern by interpreting its ingredients, it is their normal yogurt, thickened up even more, and to which additional — gritty — milk protein powder has been added.  Fake!

**No coupons for Cascade Fresh, though!    Bummer.  With sale + coupons, I can regularly purchase Yoplaits for 3/$1.00 or so.

The enemy of the good

Left to my own devices, I am very much an uncompromising idealist.  I heard, a number of years ago, a saying:  “The ideal is the enemy of the good”* and the understanding of that began to change my life in a way that is still on-going.

I have discovered that being an idealist isn’t really an effective way to approach life, at least for me.  It led to, among other things:

• Arguments and disappointment with my husband, because he wasn’t doing things right.
• Difficulty in making friends, because there just wasn’t anyone who was just the right kind of person with the right interests who was available at all the right times and with whom I could relate.
• Inaction or even paralysis in countless decisions, because I knew what the right way, the perfect situation, the ideal approach was, and it was just impossible for one reason or another.  It was the Ideal Way or the highway.
• A dirty house.  Why?  Because I — who do an excellent job of cleaning — just wasn’t available to clean as much as I used to be, prior to having children, because I was doing things like making a meal for seven, or nursing a baby.  My kids didn’t do things right, so I wouldn’t even let them clean!

And on and on and on.  Seriously, that list could have 100 bullet points.  Even stupid things like not listening to music, because ideally, I’d be able to purchase a whole CD (which I had discovered through research — reading a cool magazine or online review), and sit down and listen to the whole thing, whilst reading the liner notes, noting that they had the same guitarist for tracks 3 & 7 who played for another band I like, or guest vocalist on track 8 who normally sings with this other great band.  God’s honest truth.  It was hard for me to even turn on the radio, because it was full of bands that had emerged while I was changing diapers, and it bothered me that I would hear a song and not have any idea who it was.  I used to be IMMERSED in music when I was younger, especially before I was married.  I adored music, and loved unearthing obscure bands who were… just right.  And because I no longer had the time or money to give myself to music, as I used to, for literally years, I stopped listening to most music, other than worship music.

STUPID.

I have shot myself in the foot countless times with my strict idealism.

I work, daily, to come out of unbending idealism into a position that is action-oriented and pragmatic, without tossing my morals and standards to the wind.

In other words, if my marriage is not all that I think it should be, I work both to be content in the moment, and not fault-finding, yet with a goal of doing x better both today and in the future, so that, even if my husband and I couldn’t write books about The Perfect Marriage, at least we can look back and honestly say, “This is better now than it was last year.  Five years ago.  Ten years ago.”

Does that make sense?

Coming out of idealism means assigning chores to my children, knowing that they just aren’t going to notice the smudges by the light switch or the dried drips on the soap dispenser and clean them, like I would if I was cleaning the bathroom.

It means reaching out with a friendly bit of conversation or an e-mail or a comment on Facebook to an acquaintance, even when I know that that woman is not likely to ever become my Best Friend Ever.  I can still be friendly — I NEED to be friendly — even when the results of my efforts may not bear ideal fruit.  I can’t just keep myself to myself and say, “That woman would never really like me, so why bother asking about her father’s health?”  I can still care — I NEED to care — about people.  I can be satisfied with a not-so-deep level of relationship, when before, that was entirely unacceptable.  It was either deep, true, lasting, intense, loving, mutually beneficial friendship or nothing.  And, much more often than the first, the second usually happened.  People just don’t measure up.  I don’t measure up.  My time is not as available as it used to be…  However, I have finally learned that I can’t keep pining for ideal friendship, disregarding potential relationships with the wonderful women who daily cross my path just because they will likely never be that Best Friend Ever….  That’s just stupid.  It really is.

Thus, I will be satisfied with losing 4.3 lbs this past week, and celebrate that, instead of dwelling on the fact that I never exercised. It means saying, “OK.  Well, fitting in a half-hour for working out, even twice a week, is harder than I thought it would be.  But, hey, I can drop down right now and do a bunch of sit ups!”  So, I did my 61 sit ups of various varieties, even though the ideal would be a total body workout, or some cardiovascular activity where I reach my target heart rate for x extended minutes.

Know what I mean?

——————

*It turns out that the whole quote is “The pursuit of the ideal is the enemy of the good,” and it’s from Voltaire.

Day 2 of… the rest of my life?

I’m not big on diets.  I’ve been on two in my life.  One was when, in early 2000, my husband and I did a Body for Life challenge.  That was successful, but very shortly after its completion, I got pregnant, and the whole thing went out the window.  I didn’t know how to pull off diet + pregnancy.

Ironically, the other diet upon which I embarked was two years ago, when I was pregnant with Fiala.  For three or so reasons, my doctor thought it would be wise if I did not gain any weight during my third trimester.  He put me on phase 2 of the South Beach Diet for gestational weeks 28-40, and guess what?  I didn’t gain any weight.  In fact, I had to allow myself to eat more, because following his recommendations caused me to initially lose weight.  For that entire pregnancy, I gained 17 lbs, which was the fewest of my five, by far.  I felt SO GOOD after she was born, too — not bloated and huge, and I recovered, in every way, so much more quickly.

Then, when I was nursing Fiala, and she had (has, still) major food allergy problems, I put myself on a Total Elimination Diet to make my breastmilk safe for her to drink.  During that time, I dropped to 135 lbs, which is what I weighed when I got married, nearly 16 years ago.  I weaned Fiala and went off of the TED in January of this year.  I expected to go back up to 155 lbs or so, because that’s pretty much where my body settled, post-pregnancy, after babies #3 & 4 were born.  It took a number of months, but yes, I got back up to 155.

Then… 160.

A couple of weeks ago, when I hit 165 — which is the heaviest, un-pregnant, I’ve ever been, I decided that I had to do something.  Gaining 30 pounds in nine months just is not healthy.  Also, having to buy clothes because you’re smaller?  Feels fabulous.  Buying clothes because your chub won’t fit inside of your favorite jeans any longer?  Not so much.

The part of me that doesn’t like diets is the part which rationalizes, “Diets aren’t sustainable.”  And, I still wrestle with that.  I eat healthy — very healthy, in fact, if you don’t count my penchant for dark chocolate chips and 2-3 servings of ice cream per month.  But, apparently, I’m just eating too much of it, whatever “it” is.  Even though I cannot see measuring my food and counting my carbs to really be a sustainable plan for the rest of my life, I can’t simply do nothing.  And, since I know that a modified South Beach Diet is effective for me, that’s what I’m going with.

Speaking of sustainable, right now, I would say that, on average, I have ONE day per week where I have some sort of extended form of exercise.  Ideally, I’d like that to be three or four days.  But, if I tell myself, “I am going to work out four days a week,” and I don’t reach that goal, I know I’ll be discouraged.  But… I do need to step it up.  So, part two of my plan is to double my strenuous activity to 2x/week.

The reasons I like South Beach (which I’m not trying to sell — they have a book, which I’ve never read, and they have a $5/week online program, to which I’m NOT subscribing) is because it fits in so well with what my food aims are, anyways:

• Nutrient-dense, fiber-rich fruits, vegetables, and whole grains;
• Legumes;
• Lean sources of protein;
• Low-fat dairy products;
• Good fats from foods such as omega-3-rich fish, healthy oils (like extra-virgin olive and canola oils), and nuts

I don’t know what they do in the “real” South Beach Diet, but in my modified version, I don’t count calories.  I don’t count fat grams (though I do minimize unhealthy fats).  I do count carbohydrates.  Fiber carbs, though, don’t count against the daily total.  So, say, three ounces of carrots would only count as 6 net grams (8 total, minus the 2 grams of fiber).  My “goal” for fiber is a minimum of 20 grams daily.  I say “goal” because I hit that — and soar past — every day.  I’ve read that most Americans consume less than 10 grams of fiber each day, and that’s nearly incomprehensible to me.  It would be hard for me to NOT eat 20+ grams per day.

For now, I am going to stick with 150 grams of net carbs per day, and see what the results are in two weeks.  If I’m not losing any weight, I’ll drop it down to 125 g daily.

A lot of people who do South Beach use liberal amounts of artificial sweeteners.  Um, not me.  I do supplement my coffee’s teaspoon of honey with a bit of stevia each morning, but I’m not going to eat — ever — a cupful of sugar-free Jell-O, just because it has no carbs.  Chemicals, artificial sweeteners, artificial colors… Yuck.  Can’t do it.  I want to be HEALTHY, not just carb-less.

Oh.  I do allow myself one soda every afternoon, almost always Hansen’s.  It is sweetened with Splenda, but it is all-natural besides that.  I’m iffy on Splenda.  But, I figure if my one vice is a daily can of diet Hansen’s, I’m gonna be OK.

OH!  And, I do need to find some sort of better dessert option.  After the kids go to bed, I like to settle down with my husband’s company, a book (or a TV show), and a container of frozen yogurt.  I mean, regular yogurt that I freeze, then let thaw for about 15 minutes before eating.  I’d really like one that is around 20 carbs per serving, with no artificial anything and inexpensive enough for me to buy 4-6 each week without messing up my family’s grocery budget.  Hm.  Maybe I’ll look at Trader Joe’s.  Currently, I’m eating Yoplait light, but those have aspartame.

I just looked up Breyer’s Mint Chip, and each 1/2 cup serving has 18 carbs!  A 1/2 cup serving is really, really small.  But, when I’m accountable to my tally sheet, I think I could do it.  A little bit of ice cream?  Or no ice cream?  Little bit, it’ll have to be. 

So… it’s my hope that I’ll learn to make better little choices that will be sustainable.  Long term do-able.  For instance, raw almonds are one of my very favorite snacks.  But, instead of just keeping the bag open in my pantry and grabbing a handful whenever, I now put 2 oz (1/3 cup – 6 regular carbs, 6 fiber carbs) in a little bowl, and be happy with that.  And, last night, with our grilled chicken, I chose not to use barbecue sauce, which I love.

I figure the least I alter what I currently do — yet, alter it, indeed! — the more likely it is to stick.

We’ll see.

I promise this won’t turn into Karen’s Diet Blog — there are enough diet blogs out there already.  But, I figure that blogging about this adds one more layer of accountability, which will help me stay on target.

Anyone wanna join me??

Balancing the busy season

There’s a fine line, sometimes, between being refreshingly honest and complaining.  I sincerely hope I’m the former.

I really don’t like to be busy.  I don’t know if it’s that, at heart, I’m naturally lazy (I hope not), or that really, my best “work” is not that which requires activity.  I don’t know.  But, anticipating seasons like the one upon which I’m embarking can, if I let it, really stress me out and rob my joy.

I look upon this past spring and wonder how I survived.  On top of homeschooling and church, we had Little League (usually four nights a week), two weekly small groups (one for my husband, and one for me), plus a bi-weekly homeschooling art class, and a homeschooling group on the off-weeks.  Plus, all the activities and tasks which allow a family and home to function.  And an ill mother and the puzzle of my youngest daughter’s diet and health.

Fiala's current fave

Seasons like that necessitate that I be highly structured and organized, with which I have a love/hate relationship.  I get a lot done when my life is highly structured, but it…  I don’t know.  I just don’t like it.  I miss the freedom, and the opportunity to, say, respond to that little pleading, upturned face, and just sit down on the kitchen floor in the midst of dinner prep and read The Shy Little Kitten to my youngest, without the pressure of knowing what it’s going to do to our schedule, should dinner be 15 minutes late.

But, weathering this past spring gives me the courage — literally — to say, “OK.  We can do two small groups, and it’s going to be all right.  I will live and not die.”

That sounds so stupid and melodramatic, but it’s true.

My life is full of good things and blessings.  It really is.  And, it has been my observation that the enemy takes evil delight in taking our blessings and framing them – just so — in our minds so that they appear to be a detriment of one sort or another.  At least, I’m vulnerable to that:  I’m tempted to see the dark cloud behind every silver lining.  And, that’s not good.  Still, neither do I want to be dishonest and say, “I can do everything!  And it all makes me happy!  And it’s easy!  Being stretched is fun!”  Because, truly, even with all the good things in my life, sometimes it just seems like there’s too much of… something, and what I’d really rather be doing is putting my back against a shady tree beside a small stream, and reading a book with one eye, and with my other, watching my kids play.  And there’s too little of that, and too much of the other, and, frankly, I’ve not yet learned what the balance is between seeking Godly peace, and simply being lazy and self-serving and yearning for the idyllic.

Also, I’m taking into consideration:

• This week is my youngest son’s 9th birthday.  We have a day-long outing scheduled (with a couple of other families), and an overnighter with two of Wesley’s friends.  (Obligingly, another friend of mine has offered to keep my older two boys overnight with her oldest son, thus there is no net gain of children.)
• This week, we do start the small group/kinship season again, which, in many ways, is always so wonderful.  I’m truly glad, each week, when I look into the faces of those in group with me, and I hear the teaching — which frequently is just what I needed to hear — and I participate in discussion, and ministry, and even leading worship (which I really, really love)…  I so often think, “I am so pleased to be able to be here.”  Yet, the logistics of making it happen can nearly tip me over the edge.  One weekly night, my husband stays home with our dear passel of children, and on another night, I stay home while he does the same thing at his group.  Each scenario has its challenges.
• This week, we started having my parents back over for dinner.  For literally a decade, my mother and stepdad have been coming over for a weekly dinner.  But, this past year saw a dramatic decrease in that, both because of me being distraught over Fiala’s health and how to feed her (I’m not distressed over that anymore, but she still is difficult to feed, and I have adjusted myself to making two meals, every mealtime)… and my mother’s health has been in serious decline, with three major hospital stays over the last year.  My mother and I also had a row a couple of months ago, our first in years and years, the end of which had her proclaiming that she never wanted to talk with me again.  That was distressing.  My stepdad and I came to the conclusion that it was her ill health “talking”, which is so odd, because my mother has forever been resolute and reasonable.  It’s very unlike her to be changeable and petulant.  But, bless God for that, because after sending me a few peace offerings (which is also unlike her) of a number of gluten-free grocery/convenience items, plus a good book, she asked if we couldn’t, please, start our dinners back up.  HOW COULD I SAY NO??!?? I couldn’t.  I can’t!  I don’t want to.  I dearly want to spend that time with my parents.  Dearly.  Yet, it’s one more thing on the plate, so to speak.  This Monday, just my stepdad came over, as my mother is in Illinois with her mother.  Same with this coming Monday.  After that, it will be the two of them, but only once every other week.
• And, literally weighing on me is the fact that I’ve put on 25 lbs since January, and am now back to my pre-pregnancy (before Fiala) weight.  That’s not a good thing.  I am very uncomfortable with myself, literally, yet after a year+ of living on a hyper-restricted diet for her sake, it’s hard to Just Say No to chocolate chips.    But, I have decided that I have to do something so the weight doesn’t keep piling on, and that’s difficult, because I’m not a dieter, yet I’m aware that I simply can’t stay the way I am right now.  I haven’t yet figured out exactly what I’m going to do.
• And, I’m in the midst of… distilling… choosing… seeking some wisdom from my Father… about some direction for my life for the next couple of years (at least)… and it’s unclear…  I’ve been meaning to fast, but I keep forgetting!  After about five solid years of either being pregnant or nursing, I got out of the habit.  Now, it’s like, “OK.  I need to fast.  Monday.  No, that won’t work.  Parents over for dinner.  OK.  Tuesday.  Tuesday it is!” then Tuesday happens and I forget until mid-morning after two cups of coffee, a banana, some almonds, and a bowl of granola.  Etc.  So, I need to figure that out, too. 

And other stuff.

I really just need God.  I need His presence, I need His peace, His wisdom, His priorities, His heart, even His energy…

I closed another recent post with this same thing, but it is so on my heart:

Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge!  How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!  For who can know the Lord’s thoughts?  Who knows enough to give him advice?  And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back?  For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.  Romans 11:33-36 NLT