Vegan burger at McD's - Lest we forget

News flash on the local Auckland vegan network: you can get vegan burgers from McDonald's now! In some very limited outlets, you can use a touchscreen to create your own gourmet burger. Guacamole, mushrooms, tortilla strips, lettuce, tomato and tomato and chilli relish - sounds delicious!

So is this news to be celebrated? Is this a step in the right direction for vegans everywhere and time for a stampede to try the new offering to support McD's vegan efforts?

Yeah, nah. Time to watch (or re-watch) McLibel.

• Remember how crappy McDonald's is as an employer to vulnerable young and poor people. Anti-union barely begins to describe it.
• Remember how awful they are to their own franchisees.
• Remember how they target children in their advertising.
• Remember how they pressure their way into neighbourhoods and globalise the food economy, with their power undercutting business from local food outlets where the profits support local families. 
• Remember how they consistently resist accountability from their animal product suppliers to be humane, sustainable, or even sanitary. 
• Remember how their business and food philosophy is as anti-compassion as it is possible to get.

(Source: McSpotlight )

Lest we forget

Yes, I have taught my daughter to boo when we pass a McDonald's. I can't forget what I learned during the McLibel case. Yes, they are worse than other fast-food restaurants and supermarkets, if only because their size allows them to be.

No, I wouldn't cross the road to get FREE vegan food from them. Corporate criminals like Nestle and McDonald's bank on most of us forgetting their crimes. They're right.

Yes, it matters where you spend your money - you are voting to support that business's growth. There are lots of other nonvegan restaurants where you can already celebrate vegan options that have been available for years. Hooray!

Obquote from The Princess Bride

In the words of the (apparently) immortal Westley: "My brains, his steel, and your strength against sixty men, and you think a little head-jiggle is supposed to make me happy?" McDonald's head-jiggle may be in the vegan direction, but they're still McDonald's.

Obesity: Supporting satisfaction instead of surgery

Hot news from down under - a couple of surgeons who perform bariatric (stomach-stapling) operations would like to perform more of them on us, and would like tax money to fund their work. The media is running their advertisement as if it were a public health statement.

I've battled weight problems for my adult life, and I know there is no magic bullet for maintaining a healthy weight. Neither is there a magic scalpel. Cutting open your body to reduce your stomach capacity and all that could mean for your future is not a tenable general treatment.

Battling obesity en masse

New Zealand is, like most developed countries, guilty of more reporting than acting on the growing obesity problem. While this is always a sensitive subject, a recent longterm study showed that while there are obese healthy people, they are much less likely to remain healthy over the years.

So is it true that "Surgery still remains the most capable strategy for inducing robust and long-term weight loss"? May I see the source please? The (US) National Weight Control Registry research does not mention surgery at all in their summary of how most of their participants lost long-term weight.

But I am even more interested that New Zealand's tax money supports industries that support obesity. Fatty cholesterol-rich foods like beef, pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy. "Added-value" processed foods, which take natural raw foods and package them for the highest profit and shelf life instead of fiber and nutrients. Food technology trumps food quality.

Calorie density

Why does this matter? Jeff Novick, RD, MS explains in this article and this video presentation, but in short, calorie density reigns supreme in how much people eat.

Steak doesn't fill you up like oatmeal. Potato chips won't fill you up like potatoes.

Where the money goes

So if we're going to tweak our economic contribution to solve the obesity epidemic, let's not psych everyone into thinking we have to catch up with the Aussies in dangerous life-altering surgery rates.

Let's at least stop being part of the problem, and remove tax funding from those industries harming our national health. Restrict their advertising which often reports positive health benefits or just plain fun...and often arrives in our schools to advertise to our children.

Help make healthy food cheaper, more available, and more acceptable instead.

Not a diet, a lifestyle change!

We've all heard this. So what does it mean?

Diet

Your food choices must change for life (unless you mean to join the yo-yo club). And so your food choices must not only help you lose weight (plant-based diets are great for this) but also be healthy enough to do forever (again, plant-based diets get the tick).

+ Exercise

"You can't exercise off a bad diet" (I certainly spent enough years trying) and "80% diet, 20% exercise" is flooding the internet. Exercise is still a potent health weapon, and a Stanford study showed that changing both food and exercise habits at the same time had the greatest results. The National Weight Loss Registry confirms this.

= Lifestyle Change?

So: food and exercise. That's a lot of important change. Surely that's a lifestyle change?

Yes. And probably, no.

Adopting successful new food and exercise habits, with results you see and feel every day, is highly motivating. Why would you ever go back, when the change is so rewarding? Why indeed. Could it be there was a bigger reason for the bad habits?

Home. Friends. Family. Job. Hobbies. Money. Relationships. Mental health... the wider context for poor choices of all flavours. Fail to address your whole lifestyle and expect to reach the end of the honeymoon with your food/exercise successes. Expect to wonder why you can't do the right things anymore even though you know what they are.

Losing weight does not solve the problem of you working too much, or too little, or hating your job, or feeling unappreciated or lonely, or just plain wanting more from life. And if your coping strategies made you fat before, they can do it again.

The big picture

Losing weight through diet and exercise is hard. But a lifestyle change may be even harder.

Seeking the why of your stresses could lead you into deep waters. Your job, your home, your relationships...and like it or not, you may need professional help and crazy solutions if your familiar DIY approach leads you in ever-increasing circles.

Asking real questions and demanding better answers from yourself is key to a lifestyle change.

Chicken - it's the new veal

Thanks to animal activists, most of us know about the extreme industrial cruelty involved in turning calves into veal, or force-feeding geese and ducks to give them fatty livers for foie gras.

Also recently highlighted - the cruelty of battery cages for egg-laying hens. But why would anyone hold a vigil for broiler chickens?

Sound silly? In fact, chicken on the menu is as much an ethical nightmare as veal or foie gras.

7 ways chicken is like veal

Broiler chickens and veal calves are both:

1. Taken from their mothers
2. Kept inside all their lives with only artificial light to control eating and activity
3. Live all their lives with very little room to move - therefore can't move or develop properly
4. Fed specifically to meet market requirements rather than health
5. Medicated to prevent diseases caused by their living conditions
6. At high risk of dying even before before slaughter time
7. Very young when killed (broiler chickens are only 5-7 weeks old at slaughter)

And a few extra horrors, just for the chicks

1. Their sheds are not cleaned out in their entire lives, so they live in increasingly deep piles of toxic ammoniac chicken waste.
2. They have been bred to put on so much weight, so quickly, that they cannot balance on their legs as they grow. So they spend twice as much time sitting in, and breathing, that waste pile.
3. Since they often can't walk, they are grabbed in bunches and carried by their legs when they are gathered for slaughter. This often breaks their legs (if their legs are not already broken).

Care for a game of Tic-Tac-Toe?

“It is now clear that [chickens] have cognitive capacities equivalent to those of mammals, even primates.”
—Dr Lesley Rogers, professor of Neuroscience and Animal Behaviour, University of New England.

Chickens may not be your favourite animal. But any animal with enough brains to learn to play a tune or even a silly game deserves better than this. Follow a broiler chicken through his short life here...

Please enjoy your personal choice - use it well and kindly.

Substitutes for chicken

"What’s key is to remember to season any dish that contains a vegetarian chicken substitute. It is not the substitute but the seasonings that simulate the taste of chicken."

• Best vegetarian and vegan mock chicken recipes

The REAL reason not to eat animals is...

First, there was How the Health Argument Fails Veganism. Then, How the Ethical Argument Fails Veganism.

In honour of World Vegan Day (and Month), we are going to sort it out once and for all. The real reason not to eat animals is definitely:

The animals

Obviously, it's the animals!

Veganism means man has no right to exploit the creatures for his own ends. That was Donald Watson's whole point.

Every year, tens of billions of animals exist in hopeless conditions, are literally tortured by their keepers, and die horribly, simply to feed humans.When animals are bulk commodities, animal abuse for money will be the rule, not the exception.

How can you be an animal lover and eat animals?

Human beings

OK, we sure don't want to hurt animals, but not all farm animals are treated so badly - some farms are very kind. The human beings you know and love are more important. When your family and friends eat animals, they are much more prone to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, food-borne infection, and a host of other chronic and deadly diseases.

Photo: Kevin Carter

This is not only horribly sad for us, but impossibly expensive. In the US alone, healthcare costs are upwards of a trillion dollars and rising fast. We never seem to have enough money to do the important things. Let's save lives and money.

And what about the humans we don't know? 60% of humans in other countries (or even our own) do not have enough to eat. We're not helpless. From a Cornell ecologist...

"More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans..."

Plant foods simply cost less to produce, which means more people fed. Please, don't feed the animals, feed hungry humans instead. It's the least you can do, and the best.


The whole world

Actually, the big picture is paramount. We all have to have somewhere to live, or all these arguments about ethics and health just end up as details.

Intense animal agriculture is the number one reason for deforestation and soil runoff, and excess animal waste is polluting natural waterways and land alike. Farmed animals are crowding out native wildlife, upsetting the entire natural balance of the world.

There is no Planet B. Eating animals like this is unsustainable. That's what's important.

Arguments fail veganism

One of these viewpoints may well seem strongest to you - it may have been what changed your mind. But to turn the tide on animal consumption, we must stop competing for the right reason.

We are a tiny and underfunded minority, and can't afford to fight vegan wars. When we cleverly undermine other vegan points of view, we mostly provide ammunition for the mainstream to dismiss us entirely.

They're all good reasons. Each one appeals to different people with different values. Together, they're compelling. We need that wide appeal...if we want a vegan world (and not just World Vegan Day)

Vegan Astronaut Food, or Why braces are cool when you're old

It's cool to get braces when you're old, because:

• Your peers congratulate you or sympathise - instead of calling you names and avoiding you
• Your kids think your new hardware is interesting, or even sparkly (my 4 year-old girl)
• You get to hear a thousand stories from people who've done it already.

I expected teeth too sore to chew hard or sticky foods, and to look strange.

I didn't expect cheeks so scraped by the braces that it hurts to suck down soft food. Or smile. Or talk. Apparently, it should get better any day now.

Anyway, I can't chew.  So I here's my chance to experiment with vegan astronaut food! The old-fashioned kind sucked out of a foil baggie, not the new gourmet style going to Mars. 

So What Can I Eat?

Here's what braces-wearers can't eat.  As a vegan, I won't be chewing meat off the bone any time soon. And while I enjoy chewy candies, it doesn't cramp my style much to avoid them.

But I can't eat a crunchy juicy apple or carrot! Right now I can't even bite a soft banana, because that knocks off the wax that stops the braces from shredding my cheeks into streaming ulcers.

My vegan astronaut diet so far

• Porridge - I processed my whole-grain oats into fine oatmeal because I can't chew.
• Apple/berry puree - another lucky bulk purchase because my subconscious was planning better than I was.
• Soy yoghurt
• Banana++ smoothies
• Refried beans and mashed potatoes - lucky I made those potatoes!

So far, pretty OK?

Well, last night we had Chinese food to celebrate my son's cross-country run. Rather, they had Chinese food. I had pumpkin and potato soup (thanks Mom!), kumara, and mashed potatoes blended with cooked broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, and cabbage. 

 
(The olive is food styling - but I did manage to gum it down)

I have a whole lot of this. I think I'll thin it as soup next time, for an exciting taste sensation.
And one night I blended tomato, lettuce, and carrot into mashed potatoes and refried beans for a complete nutritious astronaut meal.

 



The top reason braces are cool when you're old

1. Alcohol is liquid - and legal!

Presenting... the braces!


I can't even bite my back teeth together yet, so I'm in this for the long haul. 

I wonder what blended leftover Chinese food tastes like?

Please post your favourite vegan astronaut recipes.

Final Groan

This is my 222nd post @minimum - shame it couldn't have been #230 :-)

Beat 7 traps for healthy kids

How do you and your kids rate on the 4-Leaf scale?  Modern life can make it very hard to keep to a simple and healthy diet for your family. Once you're in the know, you can at least avoid these common traps.

1. Wholegrains have too much fibre for kids

It's only recently that we could be wasteful enough to refine foods, and it wasn't a positive step for anyone, healthwise.  Not only fibre but also vital nutrients get stripped out.

Yet...

"Too much fibre fills up kids' stomachs and they don't eat enough..."

"Too much fibre stops nutrients being absorbed, so kids will suffer..."

Where is the evidence for these endlessly repeated theories?   I can't even find the study which apparently started it all, where a child was unwisely given lots of high bran cereals and fibre supplements (not wholegrains).

This review of the scientific literature asks: should we worry about high fibre for children? Answer: No, we should encourage more fibre.

That could be the last word, but it's worth noting the media hype of a recent UK study on nursery food and nutrition - when they found that nurseries were feeding children lots of fruits and vegetables and not much fat and saturated fat, did they applaud in relief?  No, their nutritionist said this risked the children's health.

Headlines include

• Starving toddlers mistaken for "healthy eating"
• Too much fibre bad for toddlers 

This study did not examine a single child for starvation, poor nutrition, or poor development.  The food served was simply held up against the current nutritional recommendations (strongly influenced by food lobbies for meat, milk, and sugar) and declared wanting.

Some great advice from PCRM - they recommend you encourage a taste for whole grains and avoid sugars and highly processed foods.  It's much harder to get into the whole foods habit if you've always had the softer, sweeter version, but here are some tried and tested hints for transitioning to whole grains.   

2. Kids shouldn't be on a lowfat diet

Humans do need some fats, and young children do need more than adults.  One important natural source of fat for young children is breast milk.  I follow the WHO's recommendations to continue breastfeeding until age 2 and beyond, and one reason is so my children get this vital source of perfectly-designed fats and other nutrients.

But foods today are fattened up in the factory like foie gras geese. If children need more fats to grow, does it follow that we should remain unaware of a child's fat consumption?

You decide....

• New Zealand (2006/7) - 1 in 5 children overweight; 1 in 12 children obese
• USA (2008) - 1 in 3 children overweight; 1 in 5 obese 

A healthy diet means far more than just fat levels.  But fat has 9 calories per gram compared to 4 for carbohydrates and protein.

Some healthy fats come from whole grains, nuts, seeds, and avocados.  But most are refined fats added to processed foods to improve both the mouthfeel of the foods (so your child will want more) and the profit margin for international conglomerate food companies.

So reducing fat in a child's diet is hardly medically risky or child abuse - quite the opposite.

3. My kids aren't fat or unhealthy

Congratulations!  Your kids are young and active, and they're burning off the calories they eat so far.

But their taste buds have been in training since birth.  They taste the flavours of the food their mother eats when they drink breast milk, and they learn to like the solids they're fed thereafter. They won't always be tiny power racers!

Again from PCRM -

"Eating habits are set in early childhood...Children raised on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes grow up to be slimmer and healthier and even live longer than their meat-eating friends."

4. My kids won't eat healthy food

Perhaps not. Mine do eat healthy food as well as more traditional treats, and here's how it happened.  Only you know your family's eating story, but consider the following:

• Do they see you eat and enjoy fruits, vegetables, roots, and whole grains every day?
• Do they get to choose to eat the fruits and vegetables they like?
• Do you present them with care and attention?

As per school rules for healthy eating, I prepared a fruit platter for my son's class for his birthday. They were truly excited to see fresh pineapple, watermelon and cantaloupe (rockmelon), cherry tomatoes, and grapes.

You have power over this - even over strong advertising messages. 

5. If you make kids eat good food, they will just rebel later

OK, I see how that works!

• If you make your kids play outside or do sports, they'll become couch potatoes later.
• If you make your kids learn their school lessons, they'll never read or write again.
• If you make your kids be polite and kind and clean up after themselves, they'll become really rude messy teenagers... OK, slippery slope there.

We show our kids habits when they're young, and they're more likely to continue whatever habits they learned - healthy or not.

Parental influence is very important - learn what works and what backfires.

6. If you restrict unhealthy foods, they will only want them more

While there is some psychological truth to the forbidden fruit theory, remember, that was fruit.

There is a famous study from the 1930s showing that children given a range of basically healthy foods to choose from will eventually select a variety of balanced nutrition.

But your child is in the uncontrolled study called life - and often a child is presented with far more unhealthy choices. There is no natural appetite limiter for refined sweet and fatty foods like doughnuts, chocolate, and fries.  By the time your body says enough, you've already eaten too much.  It's worse for a child, who has more enthusiasm and a smaller stomach.

Of course, like an adult, each child has different tastes - enjoying food is key. 

7. All the other kids eat this way 

Remember what your mother said:

If all the other kids jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?

Peer pressure can help you. Young children are particularly likely to eat what their peers are eating, and that goes for vegetables too.
Crucially, you and your kids can be the change we need to see - wouldn't it be great if all the other kids could be eating (and enjoying) healthy food too?

How do you encourage your kids toward your dream of a healthy diet?

Children are our Future - Teaching Plant Food and Health

My son's school requested "parent experts" to help their 12 year old students in various topics - including nutrition and health, and sports nutrition!  With my recently acquired Certificate in Plant Based Nutrition with Dr T Colin Campbell, I felt bold enough to volunteer my amateur and certified expertise.

During my study, I was inspired by Dr Antonia Demas's Food is Elementary project, which takes a full curriculum on plant-based nutrition straight into the heart of schools.  So this offer was too good to refuse.

My offer was quickly and encouragingly accepted - my declaration of knowledge in Plant Based Nutrition apparently did not trigger any alarm bells.

What to Say?  How to Say It?

Starting from scratch, I enjoyed the challenge of creating a presentation that was comprehensive but not overwhelming.

I designed a friendly lead-in allowing the children to show what they already knew about healthy food.  When I asked, these smart kids already knew that an apple is healthier than a burger, vegie soup healthier than a meat pie, and a potato is healthier than chips.  What a relief!  We were already friends...

The Presentation

Essential topics included:

• Food and New Zealand Health
• Nutrition and Confusion
• What makes a food healthy
• Plant vs Animal food nutrients
• Protein, Iron, Calcium Myths
• B12
• Milk as the Perfect food (got in the breastfeeding angle here)
• Genes
• Processed Foods and Food Extracts
• Are Humans Omnivores?
• Calorie Density
• Healthy Eating Basics
• Making Changes
• Health in Later Life
• Sports Nutrition (with Vegan Champions!)

...and more!

This was a special interest group of 7 children, which created a friendly atmosphere.  All the children were attentive and several readily responded to prompt questions as well as reacting to various points I made.  

Afterwards

This tested out as a full hour presentation and I did not have quite a full hour - it got quite rushed and there are areas that need adjusting.  There was no time for questions but it didn't feel like there were any - probably because there was so much new information to absorb and everybody had already heard the bell.

The teacher's response was very encouraging - she was able to relate very well to the health information I presented.  She seemed even more pleased after my presentation than before, and I admit I had some fears that my plant-based message might seem threatening.

Lessons for me

• With handholding and encouragement, people can accept the new idea that plant foods are always better than animal foods.
• This presentation was still aimed too old.  When I revisit this presentation, I want the kids to be as interested as the teacher.
• This presentation would be great at other schools.

Health education with Dr T. Colin Campbell - hot off the press

As I near the end of Dr T Colin Campbell's Certificate in Plant Based Nutrition, one theme is clear:

Communication is key.

Much of the information we are studying is not even new.  Experts like Dr Campbell have been reporting this vital health news to the public for decades, and yet the medical model recommending barely adequate and usually damaging drugs is far more respected.

Spread the word...

Question

Chronic disease diminishes quality of living, saps human potential, and leads to untold suffering and untimely loss of life. Compelling evidence shows that people can improve or avoid a wide variety of chronic diseases by eating a plant-based diet.

Write a press release on an issue you found particularly compelling regarding the benefits of a plant-based diet in chronic disease.

Answer

Eating plants, not animals, reverses all of the big four: obesity, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes

June 1, 2011. Move over, miracle drugs! Obesity, cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes could be wiped out in weeks all using the same simple cure - eating a plant-based diet that is lowfat and avoids animal foods. Nutrition experts like Dr. T Colin Campbell, Dr. Esselstyn, Jr., and Dr. John McDougall have the studies and real-life patient successes to prove it.

Worldwide, scientists and laypeople search for cures for these killer diseases using millions of dollars in grants and donations. This month's miracle drug is next month's horror story, and our family and friends only get sicker. Healthcare cost the US a trillion dollars in 1997, and far too many people are uninsured. With the economy in a delicate balance, applying such a simple solution to most of our major health problems is quite literally a life saver.

Drs. T Colin Campbell, Esselstyn, Jr., John McDougall and Dean Ornish have worked with patients and the public for several decades to report this information, and you can benefit right away from their solid research. Few if any special products are needed, and a plant-based diet works just as well as a preventative as a cure for young and old alike. It really is as simple as choosing different daily meals: oatmeal not eggs, salad sandwiches not ham, and veggie stirfry not steak. Heart pain disappears, pounds melt away, cancer tumors shrink and diabetics can reduce or even stop their injections. And nutrition therapy can work for people who can't even be prescribed standard treatments due to the risk.

Learn more from http://www.tcolincampbell.org/ or from Dr Campbell's acclaimed book, The China Study.

Brought to you from the T Colin Campbell Foundation. Dr. Campbell is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University. He has more than seventy grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding and authored more than 300 research papers and coauthor of the bestselling book, The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health.

I am the very model of a modern vegetarian

With great thanks and apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan ('Modern Major General' from one of my favourites The Pirates of Penzance), I won a local competition a few years ago for this effort…

I am the very model of a modern vegetarian,

I once was briefly vegan and I’m dating a fruitarian

I read the veggie doctors and I quote the great nutritionists

And cheer the naughty antics of those PETA exhibitionists!

I argue meaty topics with the sceptics on the Internet

How can it be they still don’t know where all my protein comes from yet?

I tell my favourite anecdotes in my online community

And search for tasty recipes at every opportunity

(And search for tasty recipes at every oppor tuni tunity!)

And as for all those diets, I admit it only makes me groan

When I hear people quoting that infernal nonsense “In the Zone”

My fridge is full of wholesome veggie goodness; please, no carrion

I am the very model of a modern vegetarian!

I know the new four food groups and the new food veggie pyramid

I always read food labels well for those ingredients they hid

My shopping cart is full of green and leafy verdant foliage

And grains and beans and fruits we need for better health at any age

So many yummy meals and snacks, I hardly know where to begin,

I make banana smoothies mixed with wheat germ and with lecithin

Kids’ lunches are filled up with tofu sausage and with lentil sprouts,

The hummus dip that I whip up would win a contest, have no doubts

(The hummus dip that I whip up would win a contest, have no, have no doubts)

From oatmeal in the morning to my midnight snack of carrot cake

This way of life is right for me and that’s for certain - no mistake

And while I’m fully principled I’m not authoritarian

I am the very model of a modern vegetarian!

©Jessica Parsons 2007

Five great time investments and five time wasters

Zen story - Wash your bowl

A monk told Joshu, "I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me."
Joshu asked, "Have you eaten your rice porridge?
The monk replied, "I have eaten."
Joshu said, "Then you had better wash your bowl."
At that moment the monk was enlightened.

I enjoy the artfully minimalist Zen koan story style.  (My son's middle name is Koan - he can thank his father when he's older that it isn't his first name)   From childhood, I also read and reread my parents' Sufi tales, which have a similar feel. 

This says to me:

• What is the most important thing you need to do?  If you have done that, then what do you need to do to prepare for the next most important thing to do?  Repeat, for life!

For people in older cultures or just simpler ones, the answers mean life and death.

1. You need to eat so you need to dig, or hunt, or preserve food for later
2. You need to stay warm so you need to collect fuel

And so on.  But most of us who own computers with broadband connections are facing more choices and distractions from what we might honestly believe is the most important thing.


Rocks, Pebbles, Sand, Water 
One version of another great story (this time with a Western influence) about thoughtful time management of multiple tasks.

• The lesson?  Unless you do your most important tasks first, your whole day can easily fill up with small and less important (or even counterproductive) activities.

Five things you will never regret spending time on

1. Your family
2. Your health - this includes improving your diet and your exercise and sleep habits and...
3. Releasing unnecessary burdens (hint:  most of what you own are unnecessary burdens)
4. Your education - never stop learning
5. Your friends - remember, you chose each other and that must be cherished

Five time wasters

1. 95% of online activity
2. 99% of television
3. Sweating the small stuff
4. Organising things you don't need to keep
5. Arguing with your loved ones

Can you get the big stuff in before the small stuff fills your day?

Other not-to-be missed reading on priorities:

• Rowdy Kittens
• Far Beyond the Stars
• Step1 Minimalist
  

Minimising exercising....

Exciting news which has been getting in the way of this blog - I'm the new editor of the La Leche League New Zealand magazine!  (The only way this would be cooler is if it paid lots of money, but the cause is well worth my time.)  For those of you enjoying my blog regularly, thank you because I've felt creatively unblocked and who knows whether I'd have fronted up for scary new opportunities...

So I am minimising other things, like my Facebook checking and double-checking (to see if anything interesting has happened), and I have several blog idea posts brewing but as yet unwritten.  But one thing I'm making sure to get in these days is my exercise.

Evolution of exercise...
We'll skip the part where I used to fool my gym teacher regularly during running by faking a contact lens emergency.  She was fooled, right?  Or was she paid too little to care if I cheated myself out of improved physical health...?  I'll leave that question to the childcarers among us, of all income levels.
 
At university, I was up and down with exercise levels and fitness, but I never did anything organised.  With my first office job (and my spreading office chair bottom), I joined a gym because that's what you do when you have an income and want to get fit, right?  Plus, it gave me something to do with my evenings.  Sad to say, this was necessary.  And I worked out lots!

But the gym and the workouts were boring.  It must have done some good, but I continued to be very overweight throughout my gym period.  Changing my diet - 1, expensive gym membership, 0.  Although my exercise routine has evolved, I have always found an enjoyable cornerstone in walking.

• In this, I have obediently followed the cliche of turning into my mother, who is busy turning into my grandmother, a mighty lifelong walker indeed.  And I sincerely hope to visit the USA again before my grandmother turns into her mother, who is, of course, dead.  Hope this isn't too blunt - I need to be real about this so I remember how important it is.  We are a long-lived family (great-grandma was something like 94) but I don't want to push my luck.

Walking is reported as the most common exercise for successful longterm weight losers (for which I still qualify if imperfectly).  When I had reached quite a comfortable weight, I enjoyed rockclimbing and regular morning runs (both quite difficult to do when you're carrying too much extra). 

Post-baby: I walked lots - death marches with Alex in a pram around our local park (so he would spend at least some time asleep not physically attached to me).  This wound down, especially after Nadia was born, to not enough exercise at all due to exhaustion.  Very recently, with improved sleep, this has also improved to great long walks and even runs down to the beach, but never often enough!

I realised that the real challenge of the journey was the hill just outside our cul-de-sac.  The rest, while pleasant, was more of a meditative stroll (unless I really racewalked).  So I minimised again, and now perform the daily ritual of hauling ass up and down Hawera Hill a couple of times at my top speed (which is now running, except the steepest uphill bits.  It isn't a bad little workout before breakfast, while DH wrangles the kids through breakfast.  And I do it, rain or shine.  So far.

I love mornings
Studies often promote morning exercise as particularly effective.  And what I always loved about my morning dashes is that it's straight from my nightie into my workout clothes, then into the shower and cleaned up for the public.  What a timesaver - why clean up and dress once in the morning and then again after a later workout?

Reduced healthcare costs
Exactly when I started getting out every day, I delayed my regular fortnightly chiropractic visit for one more week - and have maintained that 50% improvement ever since.  This is a big deal, since I've been addicted to the great feeling of chiropractic care since a sudden crippling pain seized me more than a decade ago, and a series of practitioners have tried to wean me to less frequent visits in the past.  There is a combination of reasons for my problems, but there's also no way to deny it.  You can't just say "I must get some exercise",  YOU MUST GET SOME EXERCISE!

More minimalist exercise
What about a marathon?
Wow, running barefoot!
Hitting the trail...