30-Day Challenge - Day 14 - Regression

I think I have to set myself a 30-day blogging challenge sometime. lol. It's been a week since I last posted! It's been an intense week with everything going on here, so blogging was the least of my concerns.

I have, however, been sticking to the challenge and done my Pain Free sequence every morning. It's curious, though: while things were improving for a while, I seem to have taken a step back. There's one exercise that involves lying on your back and doing foot circles and flexes. The past couple of days, it's actually been harder. The wall bench is another I'm finding harder to do and I can't hold it to 90 seconds anymore. I don't know if it means that weak muscles that are supposed to be engaging are finall engaging or what, but it's just strange since there was a clear progression for the first while and now it's regression! I've had one day where my knees actually hurt, but other than that, my ITBS (iliotibial band syndrome) symptoms haven't been bothering me.

If you are at all curious to see these Pain Free exercises at work, here are some YouTube videos:

Foot Circles

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3 Egoscue Exercises to Keep You Running, Walking and Hiking Pain Free

And, you know, there are 16 days left in my challenge. Why not join me with a 16-day or even a 2-week challenge? Let me know what you are challening yourself with!

30-Day Fitness Challenge - Day 4 - Are You Dysfunctional?

Yes, I missed posting for Day 3. It's not because I didn't meet my Day 3 goal, but because of the crazy day I had yesterday involving moving furniture around, some serious decluttering (working toward a clutter-free home!) and organizing that I spent probably a good 5+ hours on! I slept very well last night. :) And then there was the monitoring of the tornado warning situation and driving in hail... But that's another story.


I just wanted to take some time today to talk about how functional we are. Are you functional? Truly? Do you even know? If you are prone to stiffness, pain or injury (joint and muscles injuries, not being clumsy like me and having your leg hit the corner of the little table each time you go buy, leaving a large bruise), this is a good sign that your body is actually dysfunctional.

What do I mean by this?

Well, have you ever noticed someone walking kind of duck-footed? Or feet turned out even slightly? Or perhaps one foot turns out more than another? Or somebody whose shoulders aren't level or are slumped forward? There are many signs of dysfunction, signs that our bodies aren't in proper alignment.


I think most people have some sort of dysfunction and don't even realize it. I know someone who ended up having knee surgery. For years, he's blamed his knees as just being bad, especially the one that ended up having the surgery. Do you know what I saw when he was walking? One foot turns out more than the other. Guess which knee was the "bad" knee? That's right: the knee on the same leg whose foot turned out more. The knee itself wasn't bad, just stressed. Damaged through years of dysfunctional walking.

These dysfunctions are the result of imbalanced muscle use. What initially causes this can be different things and, really, doesn't matter in terms of fixing the problem. But think of what happens if you work toward higher and higher level of fitness and you have muscles working improperly? Muscles taking over where they aren't supposed to and muscles that aren't doing their part? What happens as you keep strengthening the dysfunctional state?

The muscle imbalance becomes an even stronger muscle imbalance. 

This can and does in many cases lead to some sort of joint, muscle or tendon problem.

There is a fitness place here in town where they do a full assessment of your gait and everything before they put you on a fitness program. They check the dysfunction and target balancing things out before they get you into serious fitness work. It just makes sense to do. Those who start running without tackling dysfunctions are probably at the most risk. And when you think of how many runners have problems with their hips, knees, ankles or feet, it's pretty easy to see that taking up running is detrimental when your muscular system is out of whack. Running isn't the problem; the dysfunctional system is.

I encourage you to check out your own state of affairs. Especially if you are suffering any kind of chronic pain. Have a look in the mirror. Are your shoulders level? Does one turn in more than the other? Do both turn in? What about your hips? Are they twisted? Uneven? When you walk, what do your feet do? Now, you can't just fix all these things by forcing your body into position. Yoga can help (if you make sure to be doing the positions right!). Chiro can help, too, if you follow up with the necessary activity to strengthen what needs to be strengthened and let weaken what needs to weaken. I have found Pete Egoscue's books to be a tremendous help (he also has a website). If you have a local place that does kinetic chain assessment or something similar, that would probably be the best thing to do--having someone who knows what is what and do a proper assessment.

My IT band problems are a result of dysfunction. It would be silly and even dangerous for me at this point, I believe, to get into some sort of hard core program to improve my fitness when I know I've got some serious muscle imbalances. I don't want to strengthen those muscle imbalances! And so, for the next while, my focus will be on "Pain Free" sequences from Pete Egoscue and yoga and some small things to help encourage cardio and strength in my glutes (my glutes essentially atrophied with my 2nd pregnancy and left me in a particular dysfunctional state where working on fitness just led to other parts getting stronger and my glutes staying weak--leading to the IT band syndrome). I finished Day 4 this morning and it's actually amazing how much the short program makes a difference. The sequence I'm doing involves a wall bench. I could not get to a 90-degree angle and last more than 30 seconds when I started on Monday. Today, I was at 90 degrees and held for 70 seconds. It's fantastic!

But enough of my babble, there's a whole day ahead of me to get moving on. What will you do for your fitness-or dysfunction--today?

30-Day Fitness Challenge - Day 2

Did you start with me yesterday? If not, it's not too late! You can start your own 30-day challenge today and end a day after I do or you can start today and have a 29-day challenge. :D

As I mentioned yesterday, my main challenge is to do a sequence from a book I have Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain. I not only did that yesterday, but also did a few sets of stairs and ended the day with the yoga sequence in the video below (I see now I've been leaving out the arm stretch at the beginning! and I hold each stretch for several breaths, as they say to--don't actually do the sequence as fast as in the video).

I find this yoga sequence helps a lot with my IT band problems. If I haven't been doing it for a while and I have a day where I can feel everything around my knees tightening up or perhaps the IT band itself is hurting or tingling, I do this sequence and it feels sooo good. By last night, I was starting to feel things in some muscles. I'm feeling things even more this morning! I have already done my Pain Free sequence this morning and hope to remember to do the stairs and yoga later on.

What about you? What will you do today? Even if you aren't doing the 30-day challenge, what will you do to nurture your fitness level today?

30-Day Fitness Challenge - Day 1

Today is Day 1! Are you going to join me today in a 30-day challenge to improve your fitness?

My friend who set this challenge up is going to be doing Jillian Michaels' 30-Day Shred.

Given my knees are bothering me a bit from doing more stairs than usual in my house yesterday, I don't even want to know what this 30-day shred would do to me. So, I'm not going to try it.

But, I've been thinking a lot lately about how I do want to really be in good shape. In better shape than I've ever been in. I've never been the athletic type but I was watching something the other day and a person was running and it just somehow hit me that I would like to have the freedom that being in shape would bring: I can play physical games, run with my kids, run with the dog or chase after her and not get tired so quickly... So many things. I had never had the desire to really be in great shape before; just kind of fit was enough. That's changed.

Right now, I'm not free due to my IT band issues and knees. So, I'm starting with that by using sequences in this book:

I have found in the past that a combination of doing an appropriate sequence (could be knees or even shoulders or just the final sequence), some stairs repetitions and a yoga sequence focused on stretching the IT band have really helped me progress. I'm not sure I can commit to doing all 3 at the moment, so my commitment for the 30-day challenge is one of the Pain Free sequences, with the intention of adding in the others as I remember them.

 Do you have a fitness goal you will commit to for the next 30 days? Please join me and share in the comments!

Saturday Mishmash

Okay, a mishmash of sorts:

I neglected eating greens for a while and restarted this past week. When I've had a lack like that and start up again, my body kind of goes, "Omg! Greens! Give me more!"

Being tired this morning (had two pieces of white toast, to boot), I decided to have an energizing--or at least non-energy-depleting--lunch:

 

I've probably shared a similar salad before. It's just so easy, combines different tastes so it makes it tasty and it's nutritionally satisfying! Super simple (and raw vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free...):

*bed of lettuce (green leaf above)

*shredded organic carrot (if you don't normally eat organic carrots, have a look and see if the organic carrots available where you live are better than the regular; here, the regular carrots seem to be old and dried up and don't taste great and the organic are just gorgeous, fresh and delicious--absolutely worth the little bit extra $!)

*raw sunflower seeds

*raw pumpkin seeds

*raisins

*some olive oil

*some lemon juice

*sprinkling of Mrs. Dash

I feel great after eating that for lunch. I almost turned to some banana bread as a kind of dessert, but decided against it because I know it'll make me feel more drained--I'm already so tired today!

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I have a new favourite chocolate milk. 

I've been seeing things with cheese and things like ice cream lately and have been really wanting to indulge in them. Which is crazy since I haven't wanted anything like that in ages and I know I won't actually like the taste and it will make me seriously ill. 

But it is a sign I've had before: I'm not getting enough calcium.

Other than trying to make sure to eat in a more balanced fashion, I was wishing I actually liked to drink the almond and rice milks and all that. I used to drink the Silk Soy Chocolate Milk when I'd get all cheese-cravy, but it left me mucousy, so I gave that up. I discovered this last week at the grocery store

and I love it! It tastes delicious, doesn't leave me mucousy and has helped me easily satisfy my calcium needs. I hesitated getting it since it is Lent and I had decided to not partake of sweet treats, but I figured that as long as I'm treating it like milk/calcium source rather than going nuts with it, it's okay. It also has more iron than the unsweetened Silk PureAlmond and lists it as a decent source of vitamin E. (Yay for dark chocolate! :) )

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Random fact: Frogs can not swallow with their eyes open. (Why am I sharing this? My daughter's rattling off random facts she's reading from her iPod. ;) )

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A friend of mine extolled the virtues of arnica to me a few years back, and then another friend more recently. The first friend really extolled them after she gave her 5-year old son doses of arnica after he was hit by a pickup truck (reckless driver! he's okay today!), fractured his skull and had swelling. When they went for the first check up, the doctor was quite surprised by how much the swelling had gone down, something my friend attributed to the arnica. Not having read a lot about homeopathy, I didn't know what to think.

My daughter bruised her ribs not long ago and the second friend reminded me immediately of using arnica. Okay, why not give it a shot? A single dose of arnica and the pain was completely gone. Coincidence?

I ended up with a nasty migraine a couple weeks ago. Looked up online if arnica might help with a migraine at all. I can't remember what the actual result of that search was, but I did end up stumbling on an article talking about arnica and some research done. The research was trying to discount arnica, having used it on patients who had had surgery (I think it was for carpal tunnel). A control group was given a placebo. The results? Both patients reported approximately the same amount of relief.

If I'd stopped reading there, I wouldn't have gotten the full information. Turns out the the people doing the research didn't pay attention to traditional recommended doses of arnica and gave way more than what a homeopath would ever give. The article went on to say that research has been done on cell responses to arnica and it has to be a low enough dose for the cells to respond. (I'm sorry, I find that fascinating!) We live in a society where we tend to think more is better, including for pain killers and inflammation reducers, but our bodies don't necessarily respond how we think they will.

In any case, I decided to use some arnica on my migraine and it did help a little. The real clincher was the following week, not this past Thursday but the Thursday before, I had my parent volunteer day. I woke up with a headache and tried the arnica; it helped a bit and Advil didn't. Got to the church for the volunteer day and noticed right away that the stairs seemed easier. Could my at-home stair training really have made that much difference in just a week? Ended up having another dose around lunch time, which didn't help the headache at all (had that darn thing ALL day) but I noticed, again, distinct ease with climbing the stairs.

I'm absolutely convinced now that the arnica helps with the inflammation in my iliotibial band, which meant that it was easier and there wasn't the usual pulling on my knees, causing pain. I will have to remember the arnica for my next parent duty day! The unfortunate thing: the brand I bought has lactose. *sigh* I will be looking for a dairy-free/vegan version!

A Tuesday Mishmash

Make-a-Meal Monday--completely forgot about it. The way this week is, I can't even remember what we had last night. (lol). We will be having pancakes tomorrow evening (yes, that's right, Ash Wednesday instead of Shrove Tuesday--a tradition in my husband's French Canadian family) and Thursday, we might have Chinese take-out or something for Valentine's (yes, the whole family; my husband and I have never done something special for Valentine's Day just the two of us!) and Friday... Well, who knows. lol

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I've failed my family--Yes, somewhat melodramatic, which is funny given I'm probably the least melodramatic person you'll come across, but I feel I've failed in everyone's nutrition education and like I need to really take charge of our nutrition around here and not only get some much needed education in, but really make sure that I eat properly, which will make it all the easier to make sure they eat properly. A certain someone, who shall remain nameless but let's just say I am not homeschooling this person as s/he's much too old for that, said last night, when I pulled out the cut up raw veggies, that s/he had had a bag of veggies at lunch so didn't need to have anymore. Like you can have too many veggies.

I did some searching this morning: If one of the baggies constitutes 2-3 (Canadian) servings of veggies, this particular person is supposed to be having 8-10 servings (possibly more, given this person's high metabolism) of fruits and vegetables a day according to the Canadian guidelines. Now, from everything I've read, a higher percentage of fruit and veggie intake and fewer than the recommended grains would be better, but I digress: This person, who may have had something like 3-4 servings of juice at lunch, which I refuse to count as 3-4 servings of fruit since it's not like it's fresh juice, and possibly had a banana at breakfast--but not guaranteed, had therefore had at best 8 servings of fruits and vegetables during the day, but probably more like 5-6. But what to say since I know I'm not getting lately anywhere near what I ought to be?

There is a part of me that is hoping that as I work on nutrition and perhaps figure out charts or something that can be on display that this particular someone that I love dearly will learn a little something? This person was somewhat reluctant to accept that white sugar wasn't what was meant by people needing to consume sugar (glucose). I'm not actually sure I've convinced him/her. But at least I can tackle the kids--and my own--food consumption!

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Might have overdone the stairs--I decided to do 5 sets straight of my stairs today. I'm not feeling the type of discomfort I had yesterday, but actual moments of pain. Too much too quickly once again. I will do some good stretching/yoga this evening and cut back to 4 sets tomorrow. On the flip side, the kids and I went to the mall today and we never just stand on the escalator--what a waste of muscle use and time!--so we walked up as we usually do. I could tell that it was much easier than in the past. I can't believe how much difference just a few days has made. Makes me feel optimistic for the parent duty day next week!

That's it for now!

Unexpected Knee Pain Help

One of my long-standing issues is knee pain. Specifically, knee pain associated with iliotibial band syndrome, AKA IT band syndrome, and possibly Runner's knee combined. At its worst, I could not go up and down stairs without heavily relying on the banister. At its best, I don't feel discomfort, but I'm still careful about how I use the stairs to avoid certain movements that cause pain.

I have a parent duty day on the 21st. This might seem completely unrelated to my knees, but bear with me. The parent duty day time is from 9 am to 4 pm in a three-story church building. And we're not allowed to use the elevator.

Some moms a couple of weeks ago were saying how having to help out on different levels and all the stairs was killing them. One mom who is there every week said she calls Thursdays her workout day. My thoughts went straight to my knees: What was I going to do? How would I manage a parent duty day without being in absolute pain during--and after? I can often do activities and it's not until later that the IT band flares up and the knee pain sets in.

Picture borrowed from this article on IT band syndrome

An answer came: Do stairs. "What? You're kidding, right?" I said to myself. I didn't start right then, even though I knew it was going to be a good idea. Start slow and build up, it would help. It hit me last Thursday that I only had two weeks before my duty day. "Two weeks of training is enough, right?" Not sure. But two weeks is better than none at all.

On Friday, I started. I live in a four-level split with three short sets of stairs totalling 20 steps. The church has a set of stairs, a mid-way landing, another set to the second level landing, another set to the mid-way landing and the final set to the top level. I'm guessing it's between 40-60 stairs. And they're steeper than mine.

I opened up my basement door, my lowest level, and started going up the stairs. Did them all and went back down. For my first day, I did 3 sets of this. It was tough! Second day, I repeated and my atrophying muscles, who were now woken up, kind of complained. Knees and IT band all tingly, but no increase in pain. The third day, yesterday, I went for 4 sets. I was even kind of worried I was doing too much too quickly (that's what caused this all in the first place). But I felt absolutely fine this morning, so I did 4.5 today. This is not to say that I don't use the stairs at other times during the day, but I don't ever do all the sets in a row like that.

The side of my knees are feeling a little tingly right now and I can actually feel my IT band on both sides (that is, feel it without touching! kind of a tingle), but all in all, so far, so good. Actually, really good. As my weak muscles are getting stronger, even though it's only been a few days, my general stair climbing feels better. Fewer sharp pains suddenly showing up in my knees and just feeling more stable.

I've done in the past all kinds of different exercises to help strengthen the glutes and stretch the IT band and all that. The yoga for the IT band has been the greatest help, until now. While I still love my yoga for the IT band and will keep doing it fairly regularly, the stair climbing, the thing that's been the hardest to do for ages, is what's actually helping the most.

Go figure.

My Yoga Sequence for the IT Band

I have not been formally "diagnosed," but everything I've read would indicate that I have iliotibial band syndrome, aka IT band problems, ITBS...

There is no real consensus on how to fix IT band problems, but stretching is one of the necessary components. Below is my favourite sequence, provided by Runners World, and when I did my 100-day challenge, I did this far more often than the recommended twice a week! It helps so much!

Day 17: Pre-Christmas Challenge--Progress

Already at Day 17! Yikes!

Borrowed from http://yogabellystudio.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/17.jpg

It's a little past the mid-point, but I figure it's a good time to assess. Have I made progress? Have my goals helped?

I can't say my raw morning focus has made much of a difference. Well, no, at first, I was feeling better, "cleaner". But I was eating more fruits and greens at that point. Aha! My raw morning yesterday consisted of a tiny clementine and my standby of Ani Phyo's Coconut Breakfast Cakes, topped with blueberries and maple syrup. That's been a pretty consistent breakfast this past while, so low fruit intake and little variety! I had said before that I needed to eat more fruits and veggies. It's very clear today that I do!

For the exercise portion, while I didn't see a difference when I put on my bathing suit the other day (;0), when I first started doing the exercises, I could barely do 10 repetitions of some of them. I made my way up to a set of 15 of each and just last night, started with two sets of 10. Definite progress, even if it's not exactly visible. This is very good on my part: I have had a tendency in the past to go too quickly, exacerbating the IT band and knees further, which set me back and forced me to stop. No need to stop! I do think continuing to do yoga after the exercises definitely helps, too.

No, not my suit, but it's cute, isn't it?
http://www.forthoseabouttoshop.ca/2012/05/23/beyonces-one-piece-and-modest-swimwear-trends-2012/

Yes, the bathing suit. Do you know, I think a bathing suit can have two potential effects with a goal: convince you that you might as well give up or spur you into a more dedicated action!

My kids and I went to a recreation centre on Friday where we spent some time in the pool and some time in the gymnasium. My IT band ended up having some burning here and there. I'm not sure if it was because of overuse or because it was being released. In any case, put my bathing suit on before we left and had a good look in the mirror. I have to be honest with myself: my challenge's overall goal was to improve habits but I know deeper down, I would really, really like to be in better shape much more quickly! Am I prepared to dedicate myself to that at this point? I'm not so sure. I am really trying to be more careful about what I eat, be more aware. The food diary kind of helped, but just paying more attention during the day, not grabbing something out of habit is more helpful. I took a couple of Christmas cookies after lunch the other day and five minutes later thought, "What did I eat those for?" It wasn't intentional, it was "they're there on the counter, mmm, they'd taste good" and I ate them. Bah. I was tired and craving something sweet last night but did not give in. Within about 5 minutes, the desire had passed. But exercise... With Christmas nearly here, my busyness is crazy. I haven't even been keeping up my novel writing. This may have to be an after Christmas challenge.

What is this Sunday morning babble about? I hope it's about something. About progress, about not giving up, about seeing things for what they are and taking the next step.

Only fifteen days left until Christmas Eve! Just over two weeks to take another step and make even more progress. I can do it--and so can you. :)

Day 2 of the Pre-Christmas Challenge

Did you join me in starting a pre-Christmas challenge? What did you decide to do?

Recall that my goals were:

1) Start the day off with raw food (trying to have nothing but raw all morning).
2) Do some exercises for my ITBS issues/tone my glutes.
3) Maintain the yoga habit I already have

How'd I do for day 1?

*I drank green smoothie--orange juice, water, banana, baby spinach and frozen blueberries--all morning, so that goal was achieved!

*I did some searching for ITBS exercises. Some people swear by them, others don't. I eventually just picked a routine I found in an October 2011 issue of Fitness magazine. There is an online version here: http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/workout/butt/exercises/butt-shaping-exercises/ 

Because my glutes are so out of shape, I did only one set of each exercise and only 10 reps per set. I know my glutes are going to feel it!

*Followed up with some yoga.

Friday's fitness and food goals achieved! That is not to say that I ate super well later on... I'll have to be careful or I'll sabotage the good I do in the morning. At the same time, I know from past experience that once I get into a habit of morning being pretty much only raw, I turn to the crud less. In any case, it was very easy to achieve. Perhaps too easy, but if I can stick with this easy stuff, it's still a step better than what I've been doing for ages.

One thing I did look up was Egoscue itbs and Pilates itbs. Both methods can apparently help with ITBS. Egoscue is usually best done first thing in the morning. I'm thinking I might use my Pilates book and start doing that, especially the legs sequence, before yoga. If I do a Pilates sequence would then not be getting just a legs/butt routine, but a whole body workout. Sounds good to me! Of course, I can mix it up between the Pilates and the Egoscue and the butt-shaping exercises above.

Now onto:

It's Saturday today, which means, for me, there's no real routine. Every Saturday is different for some reason. I have NaNoWriMo to fit in today, I have to go to the library, stop at the grocery store, avoid all the other stores during the newly founded Canadian "Black Friday weekend sales", get laundry done, all the usual. We have a family birthday party tonight, which means we likely won't be home until late. Fitting in 5-10 minutes of yoga before jumping in bed is doable; adding on actual exercise might not be. I think I need to consider doing Pilates or the sequence shared above during the day rather than in the evening, at least for today. Of course, I also need to make sure to get as much raw as I can this morning!

But right now, I'm going to indulge in a little me-time and play Sims 3. :)

Btw, it's never too late to join me! Why don't you set yourself a pre-Christmas goal and share?