I had my annual check up recently. It’s always nice to see your health benchmarks and track progress (or lack thereof) over the years. I’ve been particularly interested since my cholesterol came back borderline several years ago. Since then I have worked hard to improve my nutrition and fitness through small, manageable means: more fresh, less pre-packaged; more veggies and fruits, less meat and grains.
Although bread will be my undoing. Seriously. There’s nothing like a loaf of challah fresh from the oven.
Keep in mind, it’s not about omitting things! It’s about moderation, staying active, and finding little changes so they stick. I have a newspaper article from 2004 clipped and posted on my fridge: Simple Steps to Better Fitness. It includes such gems as “walk” and “drink grape juice” and “No TV with dinner.” For a while at work we got a group of us to do what we called Walk Up Wednesdays – every Wednesday we’d walk from our office on the 30th floor to the cafeteria on the 43rd floor to get lunch. It took 5 minutes to go up 13 floors – about the time it would take to wait for the elevator and then actually get to the cafeteria with “local stops.”
This year I had my lowest overall cholesterol score since I started tracking. My HDLs are up and my vLDLs and LDLs are low. I felt so great knowing the little changes have been adding up to one healthy mama. My main fitness go-tos are yoga, dancing, and of course cycling.
ANYWAY … I’ve been off my bike again for a week – how does this happen? oh yeah, I have a life outside of my bike – including sleeping through my scheduled BikeMS training ride last weekend. Oops. I’m still 12 days out from my first century so I can’t totally slack off now!
So I’m going to commute by bike for the next three days. 30-ish miles round trip each day – that will put me at 90-something miles for the week. I’m hoping to get out sometime during the weekend to get to 100 miles but we’ll see. This weekend is also slated to involve ripping out the carpet in my daughter’s room (beautiful hardwoods underneath!), getting the attic bathroom sink working again, and maybe spending some time playing Dance Central 2 on my XBox Kinect.
My friends James and Rachel sent me some pics from when I was riding out in Colorado – here’s one that shows off my AWESOME jersey tan.
Til next time, see you on the road!
wife. mother. awesome girl. 