I ran 1.25 miles on the treadmill today. My hip feels really good, so the challenge is to not run too much too soon. I’m going to slowly ramp up to 3.25 miles, which should put me right about ready for a 5k race on Memorial Day. I signed D & me up, and she promises not to bail on me this time. I think if she ran one race, she would be hooked.
I spent more quality time with the stability ball today. I was able to do the one where your feet are on the ball and you bring your knees in and the dead bug one. Those are really, really hard! The one where you put your hands on the ball and try to bring your knee to your chest is impossible for me right now, so I’m going to work on just trying to keep my hands on it while keeping my back straight. I won’t even discuss the one where you try to alternate touching the ground with your feet.
<p>Just returned from a hiking trip in Yosemite. Really tough hikes–up to the top of Yosemite Falls did me in. It was a good 6 hours of hiking–going down was probably harding than going up. Despite the sore muscles, I enjoyed the whole trip–went with two girlfriends and their teenage sons. Back to the gym today. I didn’t track food during the trip–felt like I was burning lots of calories. Back to the gym tomorrow.</p>
<p>Bromfield - you are so lucky , Yosemite is one of my favorite places on earth! The fam did the Panorama TRail not too long ago. * heavy sigh* I miss that valley. Have not hiked all the way up YFalls yet.</p>
<p>MOWC - I seriously need to do that. Said I would before my half. What are you doing for Cholesterol?</p>
<p>I don’t do anything for cholesterol. My ratio is good and I refuse to take any meds for it because I think they are unneccessary and over-prescribed in most cases. iDad can weigh in on that, too. I rarely eat any meat and I exercise and keep my weight down.</p>
MOWC. Those are excellent numbers. The ratio of triglycerides to HDL is probably the most important ratio. Anything less that 3.5 to 1 is excellent. Yours are way better than that as your triglycerides are actually lower than your HDL. That means definitely not insulin resistant and very low risk for coronary artery disease. It almost certainly means that your LDL particles are the large fluffy safe kind.
<p>We just learned that a cousin-in-law, who had always struggled majorly with his weight, passed away last week from complications of diabetes. He had been on dialysis for some time and finally all his organs just shut down.</p>
<p>He was all of 62 years old and leaves his wife, age 61, and his 20-year-old daughter. </p>
<p>This was a fellow who was obese his entire life, except at his wedding. What a shame.</p>
<p>Thanks, iDad. I knew you would be better than any MD at giving me the real scoop! Glad I have fluffy LDL! The only medication I’m taking is the Stupid Boniva for bone density. I get to have the bone scan in May (every 2 years) and if it has improved a LOT I’m going to stop the Boniva and if it hasn’t improved, I’m also going to stop the Boniva. I am not thrilled with that class of medication. (I’m really not as medication adverse as I sound in these two posts, but both the cholesterol drugs and the bone density drugs have some real issues.)</p>
It is a shame. What’s even more of a shame is that people aren’t really told very accurate information about how diet can help prevent, control, or even “cure” type 2 diabetes. Not that everyone would listen anyway, but it would be nice to see more accurate information.
<p>Well, this fellow had a self-destructive streak, I fear, and he was by no means a stupid person either. I think there are just some people for whom eating excessively gives pleasure, even when they know darn well they shouldn’t.</p>
<p>I will never forget an incident 30 or so years ago: My DH and I were with this cousin at Disneyland. He had been there many many times; DH and I, not so much. DH and I were going to go on a certain ride but the cousin had been on it many times so he was going to skip it. When DH and I got to the ride, we realized the line was waaaaay to long so we backtracked to find the cousin. Find him we did, eating several hot dogs and a cheeseburger. </p>
<p>This was someone who didn’t have an occasional splurge; this was someone for whom food was his raison d’etre.</p>
^Even trained nutritionists don’t have the latest info on diet. Like the government saying you should have 6 to 11 servings per day of bread/grains. I would be big as a house on that many servings! I probably only have 3 per day, and if a meal is carb-heavy in other ways (black bean soup) I won’t ALSO have bread.
Plus people naturally think a “serving” is what they are served in a restaurant, which is generally a plateful of pasta and a basket of bread.
There’s basically no evidence that cholesterol lowering meds improve health outcomes for women. In light of that, I would take the prescription for statins from the doc, thank him/her for being so helpful, and throw it in the trash on the way home. But, in your case, there’s no number that even warrants suggesting statins. Your total cholesterol will be high because your HDL “good” cholesterol number is so high. That’s a good thing; not a bad thing.
There’s evidence that exercise increases HDL. Eating good fats like olive oil and fish oil also does. Your low triglycerides suggest that you are eating pretty low amounts of sugar and/or burning it off as fast as you eat it (makes sense with your daily running). Most of the triglycerides in the body are produced by conversion of excess sugar (fructose).
Speaking of prescriptions, I just had my one and only prescription (thyroid) transferred to WalMart pharmacy. They sell a whole list of generics for $4 – which is less than the co-pay on generics ($10 now, I think) under my insurance plan.
If anyone ever figures out how to help someone “throw the switch” and change the way they think about eating (or smoking) on command, they will be a very wealthy person! Clearly, it is possible – in fact, more than possible – to throw the switch and change these behaviors, but I don’t have clue how to help someone else do that. I don’t even know what made me “throw the switch”.
Fantastic! Just being able to do the leg curls and the dead bug is pretty impressive. The thing about this core stuff… you have to look at it as a long term project. Just have fun with it. Laugh about how hard it is. Do what you can do. Just keep doing it two or three times a week. A year from now, you’ll see and feel the results.
There have been young whipper-snapper strength coaches at Boyle’s forum who have been brought to the ground by the knee drive holds with hands on the stability ball. That is a VERY hard exercise. A good substitute would be stabilty ball plank with your forearms on the ball.
<p>^^^I used the bosu ball for that exercise the other day. Wobbling a bit side to side with the bosu was easier than wobbling front to back and side to side on the stability ball.</p>
<p>But while supervised weight-lifting seemed to boost mental functioning among those struggling with incipient memory loss, aerobics-based activity programs did not confer a similar mental health benefit, the study team found.</p>
<p>“Most studies have looked at aerobic training, but this study compares both aerobic and strength training,” explained study co-author Teresa Liu-Ambrose, an assistant professor in the department of physical therapy at the University of British Columbia. “And among people who don’t yet have dementia but are already at a high risk in terms of mild memory and executive function impairment, our study shows that strength training, but not aerobics training, does have benefits for cognition.”</p>