How to Juice.

So now I’ve been juicing for a couple weeks.

Here’s how it’s gone so far:

First, I’d like to say, that the juice I’m producing is delicious, and fun to drink just because.

I’ve come to crave it.

Second, it makes me feel good. I can feel a difference immediately after drinking eight or sixteen ounces of fresh juice. And it makes a difference throughout my day, and throughout my week.

So I like it.

Third, I’m happy to report that I’ve lost a solid ten pounds since I got my juicer.

Now,

Juicing is expensive. So I’ve learned to shop, and find vegetables at the store that are in season or less expensive. When zucchinis were cheaper, I bought lots of them. Same with cucumbers, and limes, and carrots, etc.

Also,

I’m educating myself. I’m reading more about the benefits of specifically juiced vegetables.

And, I’m spreading the word. Two neighbors have given me vegetables from their gardens because they heard I was juicing. One gave me a large sack of very nice squash, and another gave me a very large bag of the biggest cucumbers I’ve ever seen. So things have been good.

Recipes:

I always put a lime and about an inch and a half of ginger root in all my juices, and that’s great. I put an apple in most of them. And I like a pear in my juices. I’ve put grapes and kiwi in too, and I like that.

The base of the juice is carrots, celery, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, and things like that.

I add what greens I can, like lettuce, Kale, and spinach.

That’s it so far.

I’ve found it!

You’ve just got to see this movie: “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead”. 

This documentary has changed my life. I think I have found the answer to my diet problem. The story of how Joe the Juicer found such dramatic change in his life due to juicing, is nothing short of inspiring.

Yes, I’m talking about juicing.

So I did a little research, and I’m not sure I’m ready to spend 400 dollars, or 100 dollars, when I can spend 50 dollars.

I found the Hamilton Beach big mouth juicer. Thank heavens for youtube. I was able to see a lot of juicers compared side by side. The Hamilton Beach juicer compared exactly with the more expensive juicers. The only complaint people had was with the loud motor.

I ordered my online, and when it got here, I was in love! I juiced a juice immediately, and I loved it! I’m now making a juice a day, and I’ll tell you all about the things I learn and how it affects me.

Right now I’m juicing carrots, zucchini, limes, ginger, apples, pears, kael, spinach, celery, and all at the same time. It tastes great!

Updates coming! Stay tuned.

 

Dumbbells are essential!

If there was only one piece of weight lifting equipment you could own, it would be dumbbells.

Even a single dumbbell provides dozens of potential exercises for your routine.

Dumbbells are not expensive, and you can even get high quality components second-hand. Dumbbells don’t take up a lot of storage space, and you can work out with dumbbells in a very limited amount of space.

A pair of dumbbells doesn’t take up much more room than a single dumbbell, and isn’t any harder to acquire.

Dumbbells are extra effective because they are less stable than a barbell, and require your muscles to stabilize the apparatus at the same time that the exercise is being executed.

I have three pairs of dumbbells that I love.

My light dumbbells are great for warming up and learning to exercises that I want to add to my routine.

My medium weight dumbbells are my work horses. I do most of my workout routine with my medium dumbbells. They are heavy enough to provide a challenge, but not too heavy to do multiple reps.

My heavy dumbbells are a great challenge for exercises when I really want to push myself.

My favorite exercise of all is the dumbbell fly. I use my light dumbbells to do a variety of flat bench and inclined bench curls and flys and presses. I use my heavy dumbbells to do flys that I do lying on the floor.

If you haven’t committed to a weight lifting program yet, go get some dumbbells.

I give up!

People who take up new exercises always seem to give up eventually anyway. Why can’t I give up?

I’ve always hated running anyway. I’ve always been the worst runner you’ve ever seen. Even as a kid playing little league sports, I was the last little shuffler around the track when we ran laps.
But I’m not giving up on running. I’m giving up my excuses to NOT run.
I wasn’t running at all when I first started working out. After working out for a few weeks, I realized that working out with weights left me feeling constricted.  Sometimes I would get charly horse cramps in the middle of the night after working out. It was suggested to me that I should stretch out after my workouts.  But I instinctively knew the answer to this problem.  I had to face my old nemesis, running.  And I was right! Running after working out with weights felt absolutely fantastic.

A lot of my running is really walking. But I push myself to run as much as I can. I go twice around the mile track at our local park. I go as soon as I’m done with my weight routine.

As much as I don’t like running, whenever I did run I could always feel immediately that running was a great thing to do and has important results.

I’m also giving up on obsessing about doing the exercises correctly. Zig Ziglar used to say that anything worth doing was worth doing POORLY, until you can learn to do it well. Well, I’m going to do my exercises poorly, but consistently until I learn to do them well.

So if I’m letting my body sway too much, or bending my elbows too much or doing the reps too fast, that’s okay. I’ll work on it, and soon I’ll be performing these exercises correctly.  The trick is to keep trying, and to keep increasing the amount of weight I’m lifting.

If I’m going to give up on trying to do my exercises perfectly, I’m going to have to give up on avoiding information, because although I want some lea way in learning to do my exercises correctly, I also don’t want to hurt myself. I need to know when my poor form is dangerous to my body. 

Maybe the next thing I need to give up is my diet. I have horrible eating habits. I need to give up. I need to give up second helpings, and large pieces of birthday cake, and most of all I need to give up cola drinks.

Curls are for girls

Here’s another blog about the opposition I’ve faced.

I just can’t help talking about my weight lifting. It’s something that I’m very passionate about. But talking about weight lifting with the wrong people can bring the strangest reactions.

Recently while discussing weight loss and fitness with a group of young guys, my weight lifting routine came up. Like dogs who had spotted a cat from the front room window, they started to snarl and pepper me with questions.

“What kind of weights to do you have?”

“How often and how long to you work out?”

“How much can you bench?”

So I began to detail my equipment and my workout to these guys. Bench presses, dumbbell flys, lat pull downs, etc. When I got to the part about my military bar, one of them shouted at me: “Curls are for girls!”

What the???

Curls are for girls?

These two guys shared a hearty laugh and a high five. Apparently I had been disproved and humiliated. But I was flabbergasted.

One of these guys was a former college level athlete, and the other had been in the marines.

So I asked them how they went about working their bicep muscles.

No good answers.

Then it hit me: Some guys have lots of opinions about fitness and weight lifting, but don’t know much about it.

Don't get me wrong, if you're a girl, by all means grab some dumbbells and do some curls. I'm just saying that men performing curls with any kind of apparatus is good exercise.

It’s true that it's foolish to lift weights targeting only one part of your body, like your just your biceps or just your abs. But proper weight lifting should exercise all muscles in your body. I just don’t buy the idea that someone would want a strong body, but not want strong biceps, because “Curls are for girls.”

Educate yourself about fitness and weightlifting. More education brings better results, and makes you less vulnerable to dummies with zingers like

“Curls are for girls.”

Warm up! For heaven’s sake warm up!

Often when I’m talking about weight lifting, someone will tell me that they WERE lifting weights, but that they hurt themselves.

Highly dubious. I have my suspicions about the way these people work out. You might get hurt if you push yourself too hard, or attempt to lift too much weight, or especially if you are not warmed up properly when you start your work out.

I haven’t been hurt yet working out with weights, but I do admit that sometimes my elbow makes a funny clicking noise when I’m doing bench presses. I’ve found that if I’ve warmed up more vigorously, this doesn’t happen as much. But clicking elbow can only be a bad sign.

There are various ways to get your muscles warmed up and ready to lift weights,  and one of them is by lifting weights. But traditional warm ups should always be considered first.

Sometimes my warmup includes jumping jacks, jogging in place, and stretches. I do this enthusiastically for about five minutes. But even then, I do my start my work out with less challenging exercises and move up to more challenging exercises.

Sometimes my warmup involves weight lifting exercises performed with lighter weights. Again, I do quick, explosive reps with very light weights. I choose exercises with a maximum range of motion. These exercises include French curls, and pull overs.

All this being said, I sometimes wonder.  Are all these people telling me that they’ve hurt themselves working out with weights, really people who don’t want to lift weights in the first place and would rather wear a leotard and ride an elliptical machine?

If you’re going to lift weights, then shut up and lift them. Pick a safe starting point, and lift an appropriate amount of weight. Don’t try to impress someone, don’t try to be macho. Just lift a proper weight that will provide you with great exercise.

How long will this take?

Ads for fitness programs and equipment on television give us the idea that sculpted abs and bulging biceps are just a few weeks away.

Possible? I don’t know. And I don’t care.

But I have been interested to learn the opinions of experts in the fields of exercise and fitness. These true opinions are hard to find. But my favorite experts all have shared thoughts about how much time it should take to develop that dream body.

Funny how right now the one thing everybody wants is a well-defined, tapered abdomen.  What about strong legs, or a powerful back? I don’t know, but I would think that over all fitness should be the goal.

I like two things that Mike Chang has said.

First: If you get your entire body in shape, your abs will follow. You don’t need to “focus” on your abs.

Second: When you see someone on television or on tv that is in peak physical condition, they haven’t achieved this in just a few weeks. They look good because of years of good habits, proper diet, and lots of exercise.

Mike’s sarcastic answer to “How long should this take?” is: You should look pretty good after ten years.

The message is this: Make fitness a lifelong habit. Don’t try to work yourself to death for a few weeks hoping to look like a sexy movie star. Is it possible? Mike says that yes, there is a fast track to a good body if you’re willing to work that hard. But I don’t believe that exercise schedules like that are maintainable. One day you’ll stop. One day you’ll quit.

Still, when you exercise, you expect results. How long did it take me to see results? I saw results immediately. I felt better after just a few days. One of the first things I noticed was my double chin disappearing. Then I noticed my biceps shaping up. I noticed my stamina increasing and my posture improving. I liked that, and it definitely motivated me to continue.

Other changes were more gradual. I noticed an overall sense of wellbeing. My appetite changed and my diet was affected. I didn’t crave soda and sweets like I did before. I stopped over eating. And there were more physical changes. My shoulders broadened and developed. My chest squared up.

But my belly is still big and it pokes out over my pants. Do I pay attention to exercises that work my core? Sure I do.  But I always remind myself that I am working out because it feels so good, and it’s fun, and I’m happy because I’m becoming more fit and healthy.  Give me some time and my belly will look better. In fact, I think I’m going to look better and better overall. I just have to keep believing.

Educate yourself! (and happy new year!)

There are so many great resources out there that will help you learn about diet and fitness! If you’re going to embark upon a new exercise program, you have the responsibility to know about the right and wrong way to do things.

There’s no excuse for doing things wrong. There’s just too much information about exercise on the internet, and at the library, and at the gym.

You can choose to be Tubby, (and yes, it’s a choice)

But you can’t wonder why you’re tubby.

So the search for information quickly became a part of my routine once I started to lift weights regularly. I found great books about weight lifting at the library.

Youtube was one of my greatest resources. There were endless videos about specific weight lifting exercises and techniques, and I quickly learned new exercises for my routine. I learned that squats and lunges were very important and should be added to my routine. I learned about rows and lawnmowers and kickbacks and pullovers and shrugs. All these exercises are FUN and they fill GREAT and they’ve made my routine more dynamic.

I learned from my library books that Olympic weight lifting exercises are great for my routine. They are explosive and good for the entire body. Yes, the people competing in the Olympics lift incredible amounts of weight, but when I do the same exercises with a more manageable amount of weight, several reps make my muscles burn and my heart pound. So I’ve added Cleans and presses and even Snatches, just because the name makes me giggle.

Diet education has changed everything for me as well. I listen to Dr. Oz. I don’t agree with everything I hear, but I listen for things I can try that will help. For example, I heard one doctor say that the best health advice he could give anyone is to start the day with a very large drink of water. He said that water should be the first thing that enters our bodies each day, and he was talking about a lot of water.

I can honestly say that drinking water first thing every day has changed my life. I feel better, and I eat better because of it. Now, some of the diet advice I hear just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe as I learn and continue to educate myself, my attitudes and habits will change. I’ll give anything a try. But I’m not ready to grouse through the underbrush for grubs yet.

Well, the time has come. I’m putting my money where my mouth is. You’re here to see if I’m really successful. So I’m putting up some pictures of myself doing my workout. I’m still tubby, but I’m making progress that I can see and feel.