Fit Geek

When it comes to my goals, a big obstacle I’ve always faced is staying on point during the weekends. For years I’ve teetered back and forth between wanting to be gung-ho about not imbibing or eating fried food on the weekends, and then inevitably jumping off a cliff into an oblivion of carbs and alcohol once the temptation was presented to me. Whenever I found myself in a party setting I’d rationalize that my love of socializing and booze was too strong to give up for the sake of abs. Then of course then next day I’d be pissed at myself for losing my resolve so easily.

But for the past couple of months I’ve started to notice something. Alcohol doesn’t make social situations better. Settings that weren’t that entertaining to begin with didn’t get any better once I was buzzed. When I was younger, alcohol made me a much louder, extroverted party-girl type of person, and so I began to equate booze with fun and going out. But these days all it seems to do is make me hungry and sleepy. So what’s the point?

And you know, it’s not just about having abs. Waking up at 1 p.m. with a hangover sucks. And waking up feeling full and bloated from all the crap I ate ‘cause of my drunk munchies isn’t very pleasant either.

So this past weekend I gave myself a challenge. I was going to go to my friend’s birthday party…at a bar…and not drink. AND I DID IT! I honestly think I enjoyed myself more than I would have if I’d been drinking. I am so proud of myself for doing this. I hope I don’t sound like a total ass for finally realizing that I don’t need alcohol to have fun or socialize. Alcohol has been a social crutch for me for a long time, and all it’s done is hold me back. I know this was just one party, but hopefully I can keep it up. I know my liver and my memory are rooting for me. That’s not to say that I’ll never drink again, but I’d rather save it for special occasions. I love Saturdays and all, but they are not a special occasion.

Sober smile! Of course, I can only speak for myself

Coining A New Move
Recently I was daydreaming of exercise-related things, and I started thinking about a time when one of my friends asked me if I could get up from the floor without using my hands. To me this was a piece of cake, but neither she or our other friend could do it! So for beginners, try it out. Sit down Indian style and try to stand up without using your hands and keeping your legs crossed.

The next step is to try it with your legs uncrossed.

Naturally, I like to take things to the next level, so I tried it…on one leg. I’m coining this a lying reverse pistol. IT IS MINE!

(If you’ve never heard of a pistol before, it’s a one-legged squat. Click here to see a video of how it’s done.)

EDIT: Apparently there are some kinks with the gifs showing up in Google reader. If you can’t see them click through to the actual post.

Keep in mind that for all of these “get-ups”, you are using a bit of momentum to stand up. The lying reverse pistol is still pretty hard, even with momentum. I definitely felt it in my booty. David said he thought it was easier than a regular pistol, but I thought it was harder. Try it out and let me know if you could do it!

I got a Twitters. Add me at MsFitGeek!

I’m not very good at the Twitter thing. At least, not with a public one. I actually have another private one where I am completely and utterly inappropriate, but that one is going to stay under wraps. I don’t want to give away all my potentially offensive and off-putting idiosyncrasies just yet…

Exercise Set Point?

In other news, I found this article over at the NY Times blog to be rather interesting. It poses the question of whether or not we have an exercise set point. In other words, if we exercise during the day, does that mean we will move less later on? If we don’t exercise, does that mean we will move more (walking, fidgeting, etc.) to make up for it? Certain researchers argue that we aim to reach our own unique exercise set point to maintain our weight. A study was conducted on several groups of children who all had very different P.E. requirements. One group was required to have 9.2 hours/week of physical activity at school, while another group was only required to have 1.6 hours of P.E. Yet all the children had very similar levels of activity. Obviously, read the article for the details.

So if it is true that each of us has a daily cap of activity that we unconsciously meet, it could offer some insight into why overweight and obese people have trouble losing weight. Even if they exercise, they may compensate by moving less the rest of the day. BUT, I’m not making conclusions either way. The study group was comprised of only 70 children, so who knows how much gravity the study has in the adult world. Regardless of whether or not we do have an exercise set point, it’s clear that NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis, the energy we expend doing daily activities that don’t include exercise) plays an important role in our body composition. So what does that mean? Invest an a pedometer and keep walking! If you want some more creative ways to up your NEAT, try high-fiving people, giving them lots of hugs, brushing your teeth an extra minute, flossing (you know you’ve been slipping on that), tapping your foot to a song or picking your nose in the car. At the very least it provides me with entertainment on my drive home.

Veggies!

I kind of a had fail with a curry soup I made. Just tastes weird. But it will not go to waste! It’s actually pretty decent when I put alfalfa sprouts and hummus in it. Hummus is seriously the savior of all my culinary screw ups.

Today I had more luck with sauteed chard. Had it with garlic, onions and tomatoes and it was gooood. Surprisingly good. I would have taken a picture but I was too busy wolfing it down.

Remember that thing I said about off-putting idiosyncrasies?

Here’s one of ‘em: TMI!

Let's see how many readers I lose after this.

No, that is not a dog penis. It’s what was under a crucial blister I got in my self defense class. And those ridges on the top of my feet were from my socks. Hey, I needed some kind of picture to include here, and that’s about as interesting as it’s been lately.

Anyway, it’s late and I’m supposed to wake up at 6 a.m. for my daily dosage of masochism at the gym. Byeeeeee!

Today I received my first organic co-op share via the Organic Buying Club of South Florida. The way it works is you join a group in your area, usually as a substitute so you can try it out before deciding to commit. And once every two weeks you pick up a bunch of organic veggies, aka your share, from the group host.

I’m super excited. I just need to figure out how to cook this stuff. I got A LOT of greens and I don’t want them to go bad. If anyone can recommend any recipes for green chard and cabbage (at least I think it’s cabbage), please let me know.

Kiwi berries! I'd never heard of these before.

I see stuffed mushrooms in my future.

I know this is probably weird, but I've never eaten a pear before. First time for everything, eh?

Also…what is this?! I don’t even know!

Can someone tell me wtf this is and what I'm supposed to do with it?

Should be interesting. I’ll let you guys know what I come up with. And seriously, recipes…give them to me!

The first time I ever had Indian food was actually only about two years ago. I came across a recipe for Indian chicken coconut curry and made it myself. I had a feeling I was missing out, but damn. It was love at first taste.

Before this I’d actually never had curry before, with the exception of the mustard variety served at Chicken Kitchen. I’m not even a picky eater or anything. I just never got around to trying it.

After making the aforementioned coconut curry concoction, I was hooked. So by the time I actually had real Indian food at a real Indian restaurant I knew for sure that I was going to experience the “Delhi belly”. And oh, did I. Delhi belly is the Indian version of a food coma. It’s no joke, but the food is so good it’s almost worth feeling like a beached whale for three hours.

Fortunately the version I make isn’t quite as heavy. Here’s the recipe, adapted from this one at Hers Muscle & Fitness.

Indian chicken coconut curry

Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 tbsp ginger (fresh or pre-chopped)
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
2 cups broccoli, chopped
1/2 cup light coconut milk (You can use regular coconut milk but it will significantly increase the amount of calories.)
1 cup sour cream
2 or 3 tomatoes, diced
1.5 to 2 oz chicken breast, cubed into small pieces
salt & pepper to taste

Directions

-Heat a large pan and add oil. Once hot, add onions and cook till golden.
-Add ginger, turmeric, coriander, cumin, cayenne, fennel seeds and mustard seeds. Cook for 3-4 minutes.
-Add broccoli and cook till tender, about 5 minutes.
-Add coconut milk, sour cream, tomatoes and chicken. Simmer until chicken is completely cooked.
-Add salt and pepper to taste.
-Serve and enjoy!

Ok, so it kind of looks like a blob here. But it's good, I promise!

Crappy quality, but a better shot from a previous time.

Workout Stuff

I just wanted to throw this in here because it’s rare when I do a workout that’s harder than any other I’ve ever done. Today’s leg routine was crazy. It was the kind of workout that makes eating bowl after bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch feel justified. Unfortunately Fortunately I do not have any cereal. I was a good girl and had tuna and “super greens” salad with sweet potato afterwards. Here’s the workout and my thoughts about each exercise in parenthesis:

Squats 4×8 – 105 lbs (Pitiful!)
Narrow leg press 4×8 – 2 sets at 180 lbs, 2 sets at 200 lbs (S’aight.)
Barbell step-ups 4×8 – 45 lbs (My ass is going to hurt tomorrow.)
Walking double lunge (a walking lunge with two pulses for each step) 3×18 – 1 set with 35 lbs, 2 sets with 20 lbs (Just kill me now.)
Bulgarian barbell squat 4×8 – 45 lbs (Wtf.)
Seated calf raise 3×20 – 100 lbs (Finally the torture is over!)

I was actually supposed to do one more exercise–leg extensions–but I was wiped out. Once again, the volume of exercise kicked my ass. Now if you’ll excuse me, there is a pillow waiting for me to faceplant it.

Does anyone else like Indian food? Or have you done a HARDEST WORKOUT EVER lately? Speak up

Dear all 10 people who read my blog, forgive my absence. Things have been cray-cray in the real world.

As you may remember, I was staying at my parents’ house while I had a new floor installed at my place. Well, one morning when no one was home I decided to walk around the house naked. Unfortunately there are a lot of sliding glass doors in that house. I was bending over to feed my rabbit, and when I turned around I noticed that the water in the pool was moving. Then the pool guy walked by, and I KNOW he saw me naked. Ugghh…he was even smiling. Here is a photo of my parents’ living room so you can actually picture my humiliation.

My towel was on the counter, so I squatted down in that corner where the trash bag is, grabbed the towel, and ran back to my room to wait for him to leave. As a result I burned my breakfast. I like the yolk dried out anyway.

Oh well. After I got over the embarrassment it was pretty funny.

Then at some point this happened:

Yeaaah. That’s all I’m gonna say about that.

Then this happened:

I took a bite before snapping the pic. Oops!

David and I had dinner at Sushin Japanese Restaurant, and our experience was…weird. I ordered the steamed ginger fish dinner. It comes with soup, salad and a bowl of rice. I asked our server if we could substitute the rice for a bowl of steamed broccoli…and she said no. David asked why not, and she said it was too expensive, and that if we wanted they could put some bits of broccoli into the bowl of white rice. Um…no. I understand that a bowl of broccoli may be more expensive than a bowl of rice, but I would have paid the difference. There was no discussion of that though. Granted, the server didn’t have the strongest grasp of the English language, and I think she may have not completely understood us so I let it go.

Our food was also served out of order. David’s entree arrived with my soup and salad. Then my entree arrived, then the appetizer. The appetizer was pork something or other (sorry, forgot the name of it), and I let David eat most of it. I did eat a majority of the broccoli, however, and they were steamed to the perfect consistency. Not too soft and not too firm. Despite the um, not so excellent service, the food was really good. And honestly I kind of felt bad for our server because she was still nice, just you know…foreign.

By Friday night I was eager to go back home and get back into my routine. But by the time I got there (around 8:30) the floor people were still working. I had a slight emotional moment about this because I just wanted my house back. So I went to the gym and had a cathartic workout. I felt 100% better by the time I was done.

Since this blog is called Fit Geek, I’ll write out the routine I did for anyone who cares. It was a chest workout.

Barbell bench press 4×8 – 85 lbs

Super set:
Dumbbell flyes 4×8 –  20 lbs each
Dumbbell bench press 4×8 – 30 lbs each

Super set:
Incline dumbbell press 4×8 – 2 sets of 25, 2 sets of 30
Bench dip 4×8 – bodyweight

Cable crossover 4×8 – 10 lbs each side

I also did some ab stuff but I’ll spare you. And in case you don’t know what a super set is, it’s when you do one exercise then go to the next one immediately without any rest. After completing the second exercise you rest, then start over.

And for fun, I found this old Sailor Moon shirt that I used to wear at my parents’ place.

Well anyway, I am going to finish my Pinot Grigio and enjoy the rest of this rainy Saturday night. See ya!

Stuff to Think About:

Remember the post I wrote about walking? I’d like to expound on it a bit.

So, it’s been established that walking is awesome, but just how much of it are you doing? Enter the pedometer–one of the best pieces of “fitness” equipment you can invest in. Knowing how many steps you take a day is obviously quite revealing of just how active your lifestyle is.

According to this site:

1) Under 5000 steps/day may be used as a “sedentary lifestyle index”
2) 5,000-7,499 steps/day is typical of daily activity excluding sports/exercise and might be considered “low active.”
3) 7,500-9,999 likely includes some exercise or walking (and/or a job that requires more walking) and might be considered “somewhat active.”
4) 10,000 steps/day indicates the point that should be used to classify individuals as “active”.
5) Individuals who take more than 12,500 steps/day are likely to be classified as “highly active”.

If you work a desk job and don’t engage in any other kind of activity besides walking to and from the car, your house, the kitchen, the bathroom etc., it’s very reasonable to assume that you’re only taking about 2000 steps a day. That’s about how many steps I hit when I don’t walk or go to the gym on a workday.

i.e., me yesterday at 8:32 p.m.

I was not having it, especially since I didn’t go to the gym. Instead I went for a walk with my marm and got back at 9:14 p.m.

Not great, but not too bad either. This just goes to show you how much a little walking can make a difference!  It was nice to bond with my momma, too.

I’m not advocate of obsessively tracking how many steps you take every day, but I think it’s a good idea to wear a pedometer for a few weeks so you can gauge how active you are. Then use that as a guide for the future.

If you’re just trying to maintain your weight and be generally healthy, you’ll still want to get in a good amount of walking, and you may be pleasantly surprised to find that you’re actually walking 7000+ steps a day. Those who are on a weight loss quest can also benefit from a pedometer, especially if they are at a plateau. When you are losing weight you are in a caloric deficit, and after a while our bodies tend to compensate for that by moving less. You may not even realize that it’s happening, and that’s when the pedometer comes in handy. It’ll help you to maximize your fat loss efforts by ensuring that you’re moving enough every day.

I use an Ironman Triathlon Timex that also has different timers and other features I have not figured out how to use, haha.

Personal:

I’m staying at my parents’ house because my house currently looks like this:

I’m getting a new floor installed on the second floor and everything is pretty much upside down.

Other than that, I’m feeling kind of under the weather. Normally I pride myself in having the immune system of low-grade superhero. I say low-grade because I do have pretty bad allergies. But other than that, I hardly ever get sick. My stomach rarely gets upset. I only remember having a fever twice in my life–at 5 when I had the chicken pox and close to a year ago when I caught a stomach bug.

It wasn’t always like that though. In high school I used to catch colds constantly. When I was 18 and 19 I could not stop getting tonsillitis. I used to have a ton of cavities. When I started working out (but not eating healthy yet), I stopped getting sick so often. Eventually increasing the amount of veggies I ate and reducing the processed food turned illness into even more of a rare occurrence.

But alas, I’m sick! Mildly sick, but still. It’s annoying -_-

Oh yeah, and I woke up at 5 a.m. today to go to the gym. That resulted in me having to take a nap during my lunch break. Sheesh!

In bullets, because they are easy

• I drank beer last night. And vodka. And I ate calamari…again. It was my cheat meal, okay! I can’t help it if fried is my favorite flavor. I’m a firm believer that good friends, lols and bacchanalia are good for the soul.

A Burton Baton. I'm not much of a beer drinker, but this was pretty good.

I ordered a vodka soda, but they gave me a vodka tonic. There is a difference!

Me and Gio-rella.

• So, um, I’m officially winning the war against pubes. Yeah. I just went there. I’m getting laser hair removal on my “bikini area” after getting an INSANE discount via Groupon. Today was my third session, and I almost cancelled because the last session was SO painful. I’m glad I didn’t though! I applied 4% Lidocain and took a pain killer before I went in (plus they give you 10% Lidocain once you get there) and it was pretty much a breeze. TMI? Whuteva!

• Since I was lazy yesterday and didn’t go to the gym, I made up for it today with this insanity. It was probably my longest workout in years, if not the longest.

Legs:

Leg extension (light warm up): 2×30 – 45 lbs
Wide squat – This one was supposed to be 2 light sets to failure and 2 heavy sets to failure, so the light sets were 65 lbs. at 18 reps. The heavy sets were 95 lbs at 9 reps.
Leg press – 4×8 – 200 lbs
Walking barbell lunge – 3×20 – 40 lbs
Barbell step ups – 3×10 – 40 lbs
Plie dumbbell squat 3×15 – 50 lbs

Shoulders:
Smith Machine military press (blah) – 3×10 – 20 lbs (this is not including what the bar weighs)

Superset:
Upright dumbbell rows – 3×10 – 15 lbs
Dumbbell military press – 3×10 – 20 lbs

Incline bench front raises – 3×10 10 lbs (These were surprisingly hard)
Lat raise – 3×10 (last set drop set) 15 lbs
Rear delt raise – 3×10 (last set drop set) – 12 lbs

Not the most impressive numbers, but whatever. So anyway, that was pretty much my Saturday…lasers and iron

Sometimes I have issues reconciling with the fact that I am not a scientist, doctor, dietician, kinesiologist or a personal trainer. There are no prestigious acronyms that follow my name.

I can't tell if I want him or I want to BE him!

I am just a girl who has a passion for working out and eating healthy. I try to learn as much I can about these topics, but there is only so much you can understand without formal education. For the most part I could not explain the complex biological processes that happen when you eat a certain food or perform a certain exercise. I may have a general understanding of what happens–for instance, when insulin is released into the body when your blood sugar is high and the storage of glucose–but the scientific intricacies involved with it are not currently within my scope of knowledge.

It is for those reasons that I occasionally feel guilty passing along information to people who read my blog. Who am I to give advice? Certainly not a professional. The only thing I am a professional in is the appreciation of health, nutritious food and exercise. Please keep this in mind when you read my blog.

To make up for the fact that I have no formal education in nutrition, science or exercise, I try to reference people who do. Consider me a conduit of information rather than someone making conclusions.

I dare say that I am more informed than the average person on topics of health and fitness, but in the grand scheme of things my understanding is still rudimentary.

More than anything I would love to go to graduate school to study dietetics or exercise science. Almost every day my heart tells me to follow what I think is my true calling, and to disregard obstacles like money and the fear of failure. I think that one day, hopefully soon, I will go back to school. I desperately want to be legit in the topics that I am most passionate about.

But until then, just remember that I am not technically an expert. I am pretty well-read on the things I write about here, and I really do practice the things I preach. I would never discuss something I have no personal experience with. While I completely acknowledge that there is so much I don’t know, here I am simply trying to share what I do know in hopes that it inspires you somehow. I am writing about these things because I genuinely care about and believe in them. If anything I say is misleading or uninformed or misinterpreted, I apologize in advance.

I realize this is pretty much an extended disclaimer, but it’s something that I wanted to get off my chest.