[Girl♥Health]: Daily Workout Stats

Type of Workout:  Walk and run on the treadmill, and a walk around the neighborhood with Finn.
Duration:  54 min.
Calories Burned:  236 cal.
Description:  .5 mile walk on treadmill, 1 mile run on treadmill.  Then a 1.25 mile walk with Finn.

What I think I love most about running is that it's a form of instant gratification:  If what I want is to run a mile, than I can make that happen immediately.  In that way, running is such a positive cycle -- it's so easy to accomplish your goal if you just push yourself, and then when you do accomplish that goal, you want to do it even more.  Maybe it's like that with all things, but with running, it's just so much more obvious.

I didn't intend to run a mile today.  I was going to be lazy [again] and only run half of it -- especially since I'm working from home today and needed to get to it.  But then there was the music and the adrenaline and pace, and sooner or later, the mile was done.

Love it when that happens.

Piglets and Politics

Are farm tours a really California thing, or is it just me?  I feel -- and I may be 100% wrong here -- that it's a lot more common here in the West given the whole Alice Waters, farm-to-table, California cuisine thing we've got going here, especially in Northern California.  Thoughts?

In any case, the farm tour I took this weekend with Nate and a good friend of ours, Ferron (who has an awesome food blog, by the way!), was so much fun and super informative, and it really inspired me to keep thinking about and changing my food habits for the better -- something I'll keep in mind as I create my Girl♥Health February Action Plan.

For this particular tour, we headed an hour or so north to visit Tara Firma Farms in Petaluma, CA.  Tara Firma is a picturesque 300 acres, complete with fishing pond, farm store, CSA program, and really knowledgeable people to offer free tours each weekend every hour on the hour.  I got to scratch some pigs, hold a baby chick and see newborn piglets.  If you ever visit me, we'll go.  Promise.

What was maybe the best part of the whole tour was that it reaffirmed everything I've been learning about where our food comes from, big agriculture, and how large of a role the government plays in what we eat.  It's currently such a corrupt cycle -- huge subsidies for corporations that not only feed us crap that makes us obese and sick, but also destroys the livelihoods of small scale farms while causing so much environmental degradation that it boggles the mind.  We think the government will protect us from it all, but instead they're hiring the executives or board members or stakeholders from these corporations to become Supreme Court justices or high-level administrators in the EPA and FDA.  And so it continues.  It's way more interconnected than that, yes, but I think that's it in the most general sense.

I mean, we've all seen Food, Inc., right?  This farm tour brought it all home.

But aside from getting me slightly political, something I usually try not to do here, the farm tour was also just a great chance to get out of the city into the fresh air and sunshine, geek out on soil and grasses and what it means to be certified organic, and buy some delicious free-range, humanely raised food stuffs to fill our bellies this week.

Wish you could have all been there!

A Theme for 2012

For the past few weeks, I've been working on coming up with a theme for 2012.   After a lot of stops and starts, I think I've finally settled on one I love and one that I think pretty much speaks to everything I want my new year to be (or that I want to be in this new year):

Fearless and Authentic.  Fearlessly Authentic.  Fearlessness and Authenticity.  Has a nice ring to it, huh?  I think so.  So what does this mean for me?  Let's take this apart a little bit:

Fearless: When I say I want to be fearless in 2012, I'm actually being very literal and very serious.  I've often felt like, in the past four years (yes, FOUR YEARS), I've made a lot of my decisions based on fear whether I've realized it or not.  I have a deep fear of being financially insecure, and that fear served as a pretty deep root in my desire to go to law school.  I was also afraid of what others would think if I dropped out of law school.  Would my parents be disappointed?  Would people think I just couldn't hack it?  So I kept going.  For a long time now, I've been afraid of the unknown too.  How is my life going to turn out?  Screw that, how is my choice of what to have for dinner going to turn out?!  I'd like to do xyz, but what if that's the wrong choice?  What if I'm wasting time?  What if it doesn't pan out?  What if, what if, what if, fear, fear, fear.

You get the picture, right?

So this is the year I'm dedicating to being fearless.  To taking the plunge.  To "giving it a try" and going where the road leads me (in some respects).  And this is not just a grand gesture sort of thing either.  I'm finding it very useful in the day-to-day of my job hunt too, or in just how I relate to others -- I'm putting myself out there more.  Or, trying to at least.  This is a work in progress.

Authentic: This ties pretty closely to my goal to be fearless in 2012, but it has more of a focus on also being true to what I want and who I am.  It tempers the fearlessness a little bit (because it'll stop me from packing up my shit and moving to Vegas, which is fearless but totally not me), and at the same time it pushes me forward too (because although I may be really afraid to do xyz, if it's something that hits that spark of "Yes, that's Kahea!" inside me, than it's something truly worth pursuing, you know?).  And my desire to practice more authenticity also stems from the realization I've been coming to this past year, that I make a lot of my decisions based on what others think or say, or the way I feel I'm going to be judged or perceived, or what I consider to be smart, safe, secure choices.

These aren't necessarily bad things, but I just know I wasn't always like that.  I was never careless, but I listened to myself more.  I was more authentic.  And I know that I used to be happier.  Ergo, perhaps if I find the way back to being more Me, I'll find that same well of happiness and breathlessness for life that I used to feel.

Really, when you boil it down, 2012 is the year I'm dedicating to finding my way back to Me.  And I think that's a pretty noble goal.

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[Girl♥Health]: Daily Workout Stats

Type of Workout:  Walk around neighborhood with Finn, finished up on treadmill.  Followed by a run on the treadmill.
Duration:  48 min.
Calories Burned:  216 cal.
Description:  1 mile walk around the neighborhood, 1 mile walk on treadmill, half a mile run on treadmill.

My workout question today is this: how do you feel about doing less one day (i.e. not running as long or far) than you did the day before?  Is this okay, since you're ultimately in control of your own workouts and there's really no Exercise Police who're going to come around and scold you for not going as hard.  Or is this something you should try and avoid doing, simply because you should keep pushing yourself, especially if the doing less comes from a place of laziness.

I obviously already know the answer to this.

I'm just looking for someone to tell me I wasn't a lazy ass today for running only a half mile instead of the full mile I know I'm capable of.

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[Girl♥Health]: Daily Workout Stats

Type of Workout:  Walk around the neighborhood with Finn, then on the treadmill.  Pilates at home.
Duration:  1hr (and 2 min)
Calories Burned:  at least 174 cal. (not sure how much I burned during pilates)
Description: 1 mile walk with Finn, followed by a 1 mile walk on the treadmill.  Finished up with 20 min of the basic Malibu Pilates workout.

After about 10 days of not working out because of a cold Nate gave me, I started back today pretty easy -- I definitely decided to do Pilates instead of breaking myself back in with a run.  Unfortunately, a mile into my walk with Finn it started to drizzle, and since neither he nor I felt like a chilly walk in the rain this morning (actually, Finn never feels like a walk in the rain.  Poor guy hates it.), I cut it short, came home, and finished my 2 miles on the treadmill.  Pilates, as usual, followed.  And the great (read: really not great) thing about Pilates is that, if you stop doing it regularly, even just for a little while, getting back at it is like starting all over again.  Core-weakened, muscles flimsy. 

In other words, pathetic.

But it was nice to work out again, to get back to a healthy routine.  And speaking of, I know I haven't posted my January action plan and, since it's nearly the end of the month anyway, I'm not going to.  We'll pick it up again in February, kay?

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7 Years Later

7 years ago today, at the start of an amazing three months in New Zealand, Nate and I started dating.  I remember thinking that I'd never met anyone who could make me laugh so much.  To this day, on top of all the love and respect that's grown over the years, there's still that thought: I've never met anyone who can make me laugh so much. 

When people ask me about the strengths of our relationship, it's the first thing I always want to say.:  Laughter.  Love.  Fun.  Silliness.  And then yes, all those other things as well: communication, patience, commitment, faith.  I don't think I'm naturally a very easy-going person; I take myself a bit too seriously and usually prefer to be in control of things (it's something I'm working on).  And Nate manages to balance me out so well.  He's more roll-with-the-punches and lets-see-where-this-road-goes.  More lets-tell-some-jokes or make-funny-faces.  More I-know-you're-mad/sad/worried/busy/stressed-but-it's-time-to-let-that-all-go-now-just-be-with-me.  And, as I've learned over the years, without him, my life would be so much...less.

So if you're reading this -- yes, you! -- I love you.  And happy anniversary!

January 2005.  Auckland, New Zealand.

Now.  Northern California

 

 

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[Girl♥Health]: Daily Workout Stats

Type of Workout:  Walk around the neighborhood with Finn
Duration:  29 min.
Calories Burned:  100 cal.
Description: 1.3 mile walk.

This is just a bad morning all around.  There's no particular reason, except that I'm super irritable and I have shin splints.  So Finn's walk was cut pretty short today, and I'm sitting at my desk at home totally not in the mood to do pilates. 

Any suggestions for lifting yourself out of a moody funk?

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[Girl♥Health]: Daily Workout Stats

Type of Workout:  Walk and run on treadmill (at 7am)
Duration:  56 min.
Calories Burned:  at least 139 cal. (accidentally turned the treadmill off halfway through and restarted the calorie count
Description:  2 mile walk on the treadmill, followed by a 1 mile run on the treadmill. Stretch.

I was not feeling the run today and sort of dragged my butt through it.  Mornings are always tough for me.  Plus, when the workout is particularly blah, it's so much easier to cut corners, you know?  Especially when the alternative is sleeping in for an extra hour.

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[Girl♥Health]: Daily Workout Stats

Type of Workout:  Walk around the neighborhood with Finn, and pilates at home
Duration:  1 hr. (and 2 min)
Calories Burned:  at least 159 (not sure how much I burned during pilates)
Description: 2.1 mile walk, followed by 20 min of the basic Malibu Pilates workout.

Pretty standard work-out.  I find myself wondering if I'll ever be able to do all the pilates positions and reps without stopping because my arms or legs feel like they're going to fall off.  That's a nice little goal to set, I think.

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[Girl♥Health]: Daily Workout Stats

Type of Workout:  Walk with Finn around the neighborhood; run on treadmill
Duration:  59 min.
Calories Burned:  276 cal.
Description:  2.1 mile walk with Finn, followed by a 1 mile run on the treadmill.  Cool-down walk and stretch.

The one mile run is still kind of a beast for me, but I'm hoping that by next week I can move up to running (no walking, no stopping) 1.5 miles.  I'm still pretty psyched every time I run the mile, especially since for the first half of it, I'm thinking, "OK, so maybe I won't run a mile today because God this is tiring!"  But then I push through and it happens and I do a mini-celebration (read: singing and dancing in the shower) afterward.  I'm a happy gal these days.

In case anyone is wondering, for my walks around the neighborhood, I'm using the free iMapMyRun app on my iPhone to keep track of distance, time and calories.  Does anyone else use this app?  If you do, are you liking it?  I can't figure out if it's accurate or not, and I know for sure that my treadmill isn't 100% accurate -- every 4 seconds or so, it'll get stuck for about 3-4 seconds before moving on, so I'm definitely running more than I intend, but that's fine with me.  If you use another app and you're liking it more, I'd love to hear about it!

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I'm currently working to figure out The Mystery of the Disappearing Comment Link.  Until then, if you'd like to comment on this post, just click on the post title.  It'll take you to the posts' individual page and you can comment at the bottom.