Way back when, BTB (“Before The Blog”), I hurt my back pretty badly. First, there was a fall when skiing. Then, there was the Australian beach crash. I talk about the beach incident here. For years after those accidents I put my back out doing simple things like taking off my cycling shoes or sitting too long at my desk.
All of that prompted me to get a standing desk and I’ve used one at work for more than a dozen years.
So for the past bunch of years, since moving to Guelph, I haven’t had very many back issues. I figured I’d solved that problem.
Until last week.
After three days of bike riding, followed by hot yoga, and then weight training, I spent way too much time sitting at my desk. I was tired and somehow never moved my desk to the standing position.
I followed the very long sitting at my desk day with a night at the movie theatre. When I got up from the movie theatre seat, there was that horrible low back pain that I know so well from the past.
The next day I was okay sitting, and okay standing, but moving between those positions was very painful.
I thought, in that doomy and pessimistic way that gets us all sometime especially in this political climate, that that was it. My back would just hurt forever.
Sarah nagged me into stretching. And I ordered a new set of yoga balls to use on my back when I’m sitting.
I know, I have probably already reminded you about this before.
And you probably already know that you are the boss of you.
But…
But…
If you are anything like me, there is a big difference in understanding it in theory and actually practicing it.
So let’s review it together…
You get to decide what’s important to your well-being.
You get to decide how to take good care of yourself.
You get to decide how you want to move, what you want to eat, whether you want to set goals, if you want to journal, whether meditation is right for you…
YOU are the BOSS of your life and you don’t have to do what’s trendy, you don’t have to be a certain size, eat a certain way, or take up any exercise or wellness practice that you don’t want to.
Sure, we all have different needs, different pressures, different capacities, different obligations, and different abilities and those things are going to factor into our decisions but one thing we can all be sure of is that we don’t need to do ANYTHING just because someone else thinks we should.
We don’t have to do any resets, any boot camps, any ‘disappear for 30 days and become unrecognizable’ *programs that people are peddling left right and centre.
You can do any and all of those things if you want to but if you don’t want to do them then you don’t have to.
Why?
Because YOU are the BOSS of YOU and your plan is your business.
So, Team, please join me in ignoring the very notion of a ‘should’ and let’s really get in to being the boss of ourselves.
It’s hard work but we can do it.
And here’s a gold star for our efforts!
Go Team Us!
A drawing of a gold star with concentric gold stars within it (is concentric just for circles? I have basically drawn smaller and smaller stars within one another.) The background is purple with red dots and is framed with black lines.
PS – Right now (9:40PM on Monday night) boss is telling me it’s time to get ready for bed. You know, I think it’s a good idea to listen to her – she seems to know me pretty well.
*I know they are speaking metaphorically but, yet, every time I see one of those ads, I think, “I don’t want to disappear for one day, let alone thirty. And being unrecognizable just seems weird.”
There are two problems with fall riding. The first is the early dark. Mostly that’s a weekday problem but just a few weeks ago Sarah and I had to sprint back to the car after my birthday bike ride. The second is how busy the fall is for anyone who works at a university.
The answer? Little bike rides
This weekend Sarah and I rode 15 km with our friend Rob just north of London, and then on Sunday we rode another 25 km west of Guelph.
I have to get over the idea that it’s not worth changing into bike clothes and getting out my road bike for anything less than 50 km.
The colours were lovely. It’s still warm outside. And we had fun flying down the road, racing to stop signs, and swooping up and down rolling hills. One road in Guelph was both newly resurfaced (” refurbished” said the sign) and closed to all but local traffic. Zoom! Zoom!
Soon it will be dark and cold and wet and we’ll be Zwifting the nights away, but for now we’re going to keep riding outside, even if they’re just little bike rides.
“World Gratitude Day, celebrated annually on September 21st, offers a moment to pause and reflect on the many blessings in our lives. In a world often dominated by the hustle and bustle, taking time to focus on gratitude can significantly improve our mental well-being and overall happiness.”
I’ve been tracking #threegoodtbings and sharing a daily gratitude post for a few years now. It does make me feel better. Even having to pay attention and look for the good things is helpful.
Here’s today’s #threegoodthings:
1. It’s September 21st! And that reminds me of a very good song.
2. Little London bike ride. Sarah and I went for a short bike ride Saturday afternoon, north of London, with our friend Rob. No photos but here’s the Strava record of our ride.
3. My day began with a dog and daughter bike in Rockwood Conservation area. Gwen and Cheddar and I spent Saturday morning walking through the woods and into the caves.
In architecture, form is supposed to follow function– the style of an object or structure should reflect its purpose (says the NY Times, paraphrasing Louis Sullivan). But I’m being reminded (again) in physical therapy (for sciatica) that form in fact precedes it.
I guess we all know this– from tennis strokes to proper stance for weight lifting, getting the form right is key both to success in performance and reduction of injury risk. The “aha” moment of getting the form just right and feeling the movement as fluid or effortless or smooth or faster– it’s one of the great personal pleasures of physical activity.
One of my physical therapists (I alternate between Louis and Julian, both of whom I really like and respect) started me doing some piriformis and hip flexor stretches before doing work on the hip machine (extension, flexion, abduction). There was a noticeable reduction in the difficulty and improvement in the feel of the exercises, especially the abduction ones (moving my leg outward using the weight machine).
I mentioned this to Louis while I was using the machine. He said that this was very good information for us, that the exercises helped improve the structural form of my hips, glutes, etc, so that my muscles worked more efficiently. He said other things which I can’t quite recall, but the point was that the stretches helped my body getting in the right form for weight-bearing effort. And I think it’s helping. Yay!
I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m back to climbing stairs without pain or weakness. But this week felt like it gave me more tools for working my body and reminding it how to do its job for me. Yay again!
I’m not planning on buying one of these, but it’s my good friend these days.
I do love those big gains when I start something new. In August I told you about Making muscles with Michel
In the post I shared the results of the initial strength test. On September 15th Michel and I did the final test for Total Strength.
It took us a month to complete the scheduled workouts that should have happened in 3 weeks. Pftt. We did not care.
I didn’t really increase my weights much. I often used 5 lb weights because my left elbow tendons were causing me some grief.
My approach to the program is committed but not serious. I don’t push past my comfort. I modify movements. I swap out others.
The results?
My squats in 1 minute went from 22 with body weight to 33 holding 20lbs. Yay early gains!
Knee pushups saw similar results starting at 12 very wobbly ones to a set of 17 good form ones. Yippee!
Imperfect adherence and mediocre effort can still yield results, even over a relatively short period of time.
Go do the thing you said you’d do… most of the time. Half ass it or go through the motions. Even your minimum effort supports your fitness goals.
It all counts.
I’m thrilled to have left behind my “all or nothing” thinking when it comes to fitness, especially strength training.
I’m enjoying these moments with my beloved. We are finding joy in our sweaty basement workouts.
I hope your workouts are giving you what you need too.
Nat holds the camera to take a selfie with Michel. Her arms are looking burly and she is smiling. Michel is looking over her shoulder sporting a red t-shirt and a dapper salt and pepper beard.
I love the elderly swimmers at my pool. I’m not sure of their ages, but I would guess most are 70-90 years old
They are there every day. They have terrible swim strokes (inefficient, barely moving their arms or legs, or both). Some don’t swim at all. They do aquafit movements and stretches. A few like to do pull-ups using the starting blocks.
But the social aspect is the most important thing. They know all the others, hop around a bit in the shallow water while chatting, or tease and sometimes goof around splashing each other like pre-teens.
I treat every swim like a training swim, trying to get more streamlined, pull and kick stronger, aiming to be as efficient as a shark. But I have learned to love the people who have a grand time every day, while swimming as efficiently as a clownfish or batfish.
Clownfish can swim, but settle into their little plot of anemone and early move more than a few feet from there, so they aren’t particularly efficient swimmers.
According to the Bristol Aquariun, “Batfish aren’t winning any races against their fellow fish anytime soon. In fact, these unusual bottom-dwellers can barely swim at all. Instead, they scamper across the seafloor on their pectoral, pelvic and anal fins, rather like a frog or crustacean.”
Thankfully, my swimmers don’t need to adapt to their surroundings. We have learned to adapt to their needs with things like steps or a ramp into the water, and equipment like flotation belts and aquafit weights available for them to use.
What other equipment and modifications can we make to public facilities to encourage older people to keep active? I would love to hear your ideas.
The other 20% of the time it was a screencap of the info from my fitness app. That was less inspiring (less interesting!) but it kept the habit in place.
I’m sure that was partially because of my injury but it was also because it felt like I was journaling for its own sake rather than for any actual benefit.
I was essentially keeping the habit in place but for no real reason so it’s no wonder the practice just kind of dropped off my to do list.
For the record, I’m not being hard on myself about this – I’m just noting what happened and I don’t feel bad about it at all.
BUT
I think it’s time to get back into the practice of reflecting on my fitness – what I did, how I felt, how I want to feel and what activities might help me to feel that way- and obviously a journal is the direct route to that kind of thinking.
I’m probably going to do some combination of a digital journal (so I can think aloud with voice dictation) and and paper journal that has lots of room for me to write, draw, and collage.
I’ve revisited my earlier posts and developed a series of questions to use as a guideline and I (once again) plan to review my previous entry when starting a new one (extra reflection? why not?)
AND since journaling often leads me to solutions I haven’t thought about before but I promptly forget them once I close my journal – I am going to keep some index cards nearby to pull workable ideas out of my journal pages to keep for easy reference.
My plan right now is to do some fitness journaling 3x per week (I think writing once per week was part of the problem before – too much to say in one entry so it became a chore) for 3 weeks and see how it feels.
And, of course, I will probably make adjustments as I go.
Do you journal about your fitness practices? Do you find it helpful? Do you have any advice to offer?
What was the verdict? Ultra-processed food diets were associated with weight gain (compared with minimally processed food diets) as well as increased mortality risk.
[Ultra-processed foods are] ready-to-eat industrially formulated products that are “made mostly or entirely from substances derived from foods and additives, with little if any [minimally processed plant or animal] foods.
It’s now time for an update.
In a recent scientific advisory, the American Heart Association clarified the messaging around ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption. On the one hand, they advise us to:
Reduce the intake of most UPFs, especially junk foods, and
Replace most UPFs with healthier options such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, healthy oils, and lean proteins.
However, they also said this:
… not all UPFs are harmful. Certain whole grain breads, low-sugar yogurts, tomato sauces, and nut or bean-based spreads are of better diet quality, have been associated with improved health outcomes, and are affordable, allowing possible inclusion in diets. These food products should be monitored and reformulated if future data show harm to overall health.
The focus should be on cutting back the most harmful UPFs that are already high in unhealthy fats, added sugars, and salt while allowing a small number of select, affordable UPFs of better diet quality to be consumed as part of a healthy dietary pattern.
So what’s the more nuanced message here, and why does it seem like nutrition scientists are pulling their punches on processed foods? These are complicated questions. But, here’s my attempt as a first pass.
We know that a lot of people consume ultra-processed foods for a majority of their daily diets.
Recent data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that from 2021 to 2023, people in the US aged 1 year or older consumed an average of 55% of their calories from ultraprocessed foods. For youth aged 1 to 18 years, ultraprocessed foods made up about 62% of their diets.
Just telling people they’re eating a lot of junky food and to stop it forthwith isn’t an effective public health policy. Instead, we can focus on a few more specific strategies.
“When we’re shifting the 55% to 60% of calories from ultraprocessed foods,” [nutrition professor Maya Vadiveloo] said, “we really need to be reducing sugar-sweetened beverages, processed meat, candies, baked goods.”
Still, she noted the considerable challenges ahead. It’s difficult for people to make wholesale changes to eating behaviors, especially when there are barriers to accessing and affording more healthful foods. Plus, preparing whole foods often takes longer—time that many households may not have.
“We want people to make healthier choices most of the time, and we need to set up the food environment in a way that allows that, which involves changing so many different things, including the marketing of different foods; the cost of raw ingredients used to make different foods; the availability of adequate fruits and vegetables and whole grains and things that people need to consume more of; and the skills that they need to have to prepare them,” she said.
What does this mean?
Focusing on particular ultra-processed foods–paying more attention to them as individual consumers, community members, voters, and policymakers– can pay off in terms of incremental and sustainable changes in diet patterns, and hopefully public health in the long term.
Also, we need to work towards building a food environment with better access to good-for-us and yummy-tasting fruits, vegetables, whole grains and proteins, which includes pricing and easy consumability (I made up that word, but I mean not having to cook for five hours to make it edible).
How do nutrition experts and medical organizations propose to do this?
They don’t know exactly. But they think it’s important, and need our help. So I though I’d put this in bold letters too.
Personally, I love pictures to help illustrate complicated and often technical messaging. So in summary, even though we often eat like this::
A trio of ultra-processed foods: burgers, chips/crisps, and those candy sprinkles that taste weird
We should apply principles of nuance to our eating, which will help, like this:
This is what Unsplash came up with when I entered “nuance”. Good luck to all of us.
Sometimes a thousand words are better than pictures, eh?
