Whahoo!

Just went for my first yearly check up in a long time since I've been in school. The results:




Resting Heart Rate: 52 bpm
Blood Pressure: 90/60
Doc's Recommendations: Make sure I'm getting all of the vitamins I need despite all the food I can't eat. [Duh!]

Many family members and friends have encouraged me to get healthier, but I want to thank Kevin for getting me hooked on running! After that first run in 2007 (what was it, like a 17 minute mile? yikes), I never thought I could say that: I'm not only off all allergy medication, but I can run 6 miles on a whim, my heart rate is way below the scary 90s where it once was, I can eat more than just "pork chops, salad, and squash" as you used to say, and I don't get headaches regularly. Love you!

Can you believe that HR! That just blows my mind! That's even with the "stress" of going to the doctor's office. Very excited! Very cool! I'm amazed at the human body! I'm "overcome with love" as Trina says!

Current Exercise Log

If you don't have access to Facebook where I push my detailed exercise log, I've downloaded a version into an Excel sheet and posted it here. You'll find more notes than what I mentioned in Thursdays blog about little squirts, Kent and Kaiya as well as other meanderings. I love logyourrun.com! So cool!

Being Kent. Being Kaiya.

When I exercise, sometimes I’m like Kent (pictured left).

I want to just get out there and get the job done. I’m on a mission. When I run, I’ve got my face and eyes forward, no sniffing or looking around (at lost gloves and socks on the ground), and I’ve got lot’s of drive (pulling). I don’t want to listen to music. I want to go fast (fast as I can!). I’ve got my eye on the ball, soccer ball in his case, and I have a purpose. Obviously, I don’t herd soccer balls like Kent, but I can have the same stubbornness and determination, sometimes.

And then sometimes I’m like Kaiya (pictured right).

When Kaiya’s on a run, she’s sniffing everything and quite often stops for interesting finds, like lost gloves. They’re tasty. When I’m like her, I’m not concerned about speed, although I know I want to run and play. I like distractions, although I’ll pass on the gloves. I want to listen to music. I want to go at my own pace. I want to experience lots of cool things on the run. Kaiya loves to be in new places and meet new people. Kaiya’s mission: lick as many people as possible. Like her, I want to go on new routes. I like people on the run. I like saying hello to strangers and I like other people running with me. Kaiya likes to chase balls, run, pull the rope, chew, chase, run away. I too want to do a variety of things like biking, swimming, step class, boot camp, long walks, weight lifting, ping pong, crunches, and running, for short periods of time, rather than one thing for forever.

So what was yesterday?

Yesterday was officially a Kaiya day! I've been having a lot lately.

Pizza Everyday! Whahoo!

Like I mentioned to The Allergic Kid, I would have eaten pizza every day when I was a kid if given the choice (thanks mom for stopping me and for also limiting my Mac-n-Cheese intake!). Although I’ve learned a little--a little I tell you--self restraint and don’t need pizza every day, pizza is still a good carb to have before a long exercise. I haven’t yet perfected my crust and I’m tempted to try The Daily Dietribe’s version next. But for now, I’ve been following the recipe below. The crust doesn’t have that chewy hold-together-nicely consistency of regular wheat flour. When I store the pizza, I have to pile them on top of a plate gently and then bag it, rather than just bag it. However the toppings are what I have perfected. I LOVE lots of onions and Brussels sprouts.

Gluten Free, Egg Free, Yeast Free, Cow-Milk Free Pizza Crust

• 1 1/3 cups Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp your choice of oil
• 1 1/2 cups water (or milk substitute).
• 1 tsp of McCormick’s no salt Italian Spice mix (optional)
• 1/2 tsp of onion or garlic powder

Toppings

• Cooked sliced Brussels sprouts
• Ground turkey or beef
• Diced bell peppers
• Chopped Onions (lots; the more the merrier)
• Grated Goat Cheese of choice (added to only half of the pizza so that I don’t eat cheese too often the week following)
• Diced Zucchini or Yellow Squash
• Hunt’s Tomato Sauce: Basil, Garlic, and Oregano 

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread onto a large, oiled pizza pan (preferably with vent holes). Add the sauce. Add the toppings. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Photo Round-up Extravaganza

Kevin and I have been doing a lot and taking pictures over the last month. These are just a few dog/house/cooking/physical activity events we've dealt with. Here's our lovely garage after Christmas break when Kevin had more time off (since he's a fancy pants faculty member; Love you again!). Beautiful, just beautiful!

Here's Kent and Kaiya's first night together after 6 hours of rough-housing, err, I mean "socializing."

The "Yeah for Me and You" bar stools on our newly claimed bar off the kitchen.

Excellent thumbprint cookies via Food Allergy Momma. I replaced the wheat flour with Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour and the mix was a little (a lot) too runny to retain the thumbprint, so I added a little more flour and some powdered sugar (because I ran out of the regular sugar) and they turned out to be a lot like shortbread. Very good shortbread with all-fruit jelly in the middle (and a few had some pink and white nerds on top). If I did this recipe again, I'd, first of all, buy more regular sugar, and then probably use Bob's Red mill's recipe for sugar cookies perhaps. I don't know... We'll see...

Here's a momento from our septic tank extravaganza! Over Thanksgiving, Kaiya dug us a wonderful hole right over our septic tank. On closer inspection, this hole turned into a cave when she discovered that the top of our cement septic tank was disinntegrating. Smart puppy, Kaiya! Anyway, it took us a couple of months to schedule someone to come out and fix the problem and pump the tanks (two of 'em). They did a great job and now we're smell free in the back yard! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Perhaps someone is telling us that we need to cut back on the fiber...In the words of my dad, we've got our "poop-shoot" working properly again.

Kevin and I went to help Kayla and Terrell remodel (or should I say model) their master bathroom. Had lots of fun and learned a lot. After kicking up powder-like cement dust while sawing through their slab, Kevin aged 40 years (in appearance only, of course).

Oh my! I'm excited about this news. I made homemade mayonnaise (and got it right on the first try too)! Thanks to a recipe I found on Just Hungry.com, I was able to eat mayonnaise/miracle whip recipe for the first time since high school. I substituted wine vinegar for lemon juice and I used vegitable oil (soy oil). Had to add three eggs though because evidently, I'm even more impatient than the blogger. In my opinion, I would definitely only add that second egg after you have all of the oil dripped into the first egg. Goohood stuff, man! Kevin helped boil some eggs and made side dishes so that I could try deviled eggs for the first time.

See how I eat them:

See how happy I am!

Poor Kevin had to put up with about a billion comments from me like...

Katherine: "Do you know what I did today?"

Kevin: "No, what?"

Katherine: "I had mayonnaise!"

Kevin: "Oh."

[5 seconds later]

Katherine: "Guess what I ate today?"

Kevin: "Gee biligans..."

...And that's about all I talked about the rest of the evening.

So that about raps up this week's PHOTO ROUND-UP EXTRAVAGANZA [said in deep announcer's voice]. Stay tuned for the next PHOTO ROUND-UP [cough, cough] EXTRAVA [cough, cough] GANZA! Whoohoo! Just in time too! Too much announcer voice and I'll cough up a lung. Uh huh.

Dieting on a Limited Diet

I’ve written a novel, so get ready.

Yes, at some point in my life, I was “chubby Katherine.” I quit dance classes (I was taking up to 4-5 hours a week) right after elementary school and ballooned to about 120 through middle school. I can’t tell you exactly how tall I was, but let’s just say that I’m now 5 feet 4 3/4 inches now and I grew very slowly. In fact, I grew so slow that I gained about another ¼ of an inch in college. Not until I was a freshman in high school, where I became so self-conscious that I limited my diet in a bad way (probably wasn’t taking in more than maybe 1,000 calories a day) did I finally take off the weight. Then I went to college and relaxed my diet due to the lovely pallet of resident hall food options. I’ve struggled with weight off and on since then, but not to that extreme.

Quitting dance classes was not the only culprit. I’ve often believed that having food allergies and a limited diet has often made me more food conscious, which is a topic Iris brought up. Thus, when I find a replacement for a favorite food that’s on my no-no list, I’ll eat way more than I should. When I add a new food to my diet, like rice, I’ll go a little overboard. Or when I start getting more headaches, I’ll start throwing food out of my diet like water from a sinking ship and be so scared of the pain that it takes me years to try the food again, and I’ll lose 10 pounds in two weeks during the process.

Within the past year, though, Kevin and I decided to start eating healthier. Kevin wanted to kick his candy habit; he’s one of those wonderful people who must eat about a pound of candy a day in order to gain any type of weight (love you!). I started training for the half marathon and needed to lose some weight to make it as pain-free as possible.

Now, there is one major thing that I have to do in order to maintain or lose weight on my limited diet.

Exercise.

I’m not talking binge exercising, where you go out and run your first-ever 3 miles at a scary pace each day for a week and then stop because you burn yourself out. I’m talking “slow but steady wins the race.” I’m talking a cardiovascular activity that you do at least three times a week for thirty minutes. Something that you know you can handle for years at a time and can maintain and, if interested, build on steadily. With that in mind, the following diet tips and tricks have helped me to lose weight and keep it at a steady 132 for the past year. Again, I'm not a dietition or have a degree in kinesiology, so these are just what I've found helpful.

10 Keys for Maintaining and Losing Weight on My Limited Diet:

1. Sugar free gum. This is something that I’ve seen promoted in pop culture (Biggest Looser), but, beyond the hype, we’ve found it quite helpful. Gum is great for three reasons: to chew while you’re making food so that you don’t snack, to chew right after a meal instead of going back for seconds, and to chew during those times that you feel like snacking for no reason other than because you’re bored or craving a food. We’ll eventually wean ourselves off the family-sized packs of gum at some point, but we’re not knocking it right now.
2. Water and plenty of Sugar free, salt free, and potassium free flavored drink mixes. I’ve quite often mistaken hunger for thirst in the belly, so I find it’s important to drink plenty of water. But water all the time can be rather…blah. So I sometimes add no or low calorie drinks. My favorite healthy soda used to be Diet Rite sodas because they’re calorie free, carb free, salt free, and caffeine free, but the local Wal-mart doesn’t have those here. So, I’ve switched to the Great Value brand drink mixes (gotta be picky because some add salt, caffeine and that makes me thirstier and hungrier).
3. No caffeine. Talk about a drug that can make you soar and plummet all within a couple of hours. Besides the nasty headache side effects, it’s just not good for maintaining a constant energy level in my body.
4. Limit the salt. What goes with tasty salty French fries? A 48 oz/gallon of sugary soda, of course. Then the salt makes you retain all that liquid. I personally can tell the difference in my running if I’ve had lots of salt beforehand. And if it shows up on a run when my body is forced to be as efficient as possible in order go, go, go, then it’s probably not so good for the bod at other times during the day either.
5. Fiber. Like Farty Girl suggests, it cleans the pipes. Now, if you’re staying away from gluten like me, chances are you’re already eating more fiber than the average person, so adding more might not be necessary. But let me just say that lettuce, carrots, and tomatoes have a limited amount of fiber in comparison to squash, celery, spinach, and beans. Salad doesn’t cut it for me.
6. Tums. Taking calcium in the morning and in the evening also tends to make me less likely to gorge. And berry flavored Tums are tasty for a girl who doesn't drink cow milk.
7. Frequent small meals. My metabolism speeds up if I split up my meals into smaller portions, especially lunch. I’ll have breakfast at 8:00 am, then a main dish at 11:00 am or 12:00 pm, then I’ll have another snack around 2:00 pm and then I’ll have a quick snack when I get home at 5:00 pm, then we’ll eat dinner. If I’m trying to maintain my weight, I’ll eat until I’m full for each meal, but if I’m trying to lose weight I’ll eat until I’m almost full.
8. Reduce the carbohydrate intake. Again, this is not so hard considering I can’t eat wheat, but it also means that I can’t just pile on the rice and corn products either. I’m placing sugar in this category too. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t eat candy unless someone gives me a piece or two or if I’m visiting someone and I treat it like a treat (love your after dinner mints Kayla and Terrell!).
9. Working away from home. I always make my lunch and snack the night before work. This also helps to make sure that (1) I don’t eat out and (2) I don’t over snack during at least 5 days a week. I’m limited by what I bring, so I just bring enough. Weekends are harder, but I can’t be perfect all the time!
10. Not eating after 8 pm (or three hours before bed). This deadline gives the food time to digest and do some productive things in my body rather than sit and fester in my gut as I sleep. Kevin and I both seem to actually feel hungrier in the morning if we eat too late. Again, this is easier during the work week and hard on the weekend or on vacations.

Whoo! Now, you’ll notice, a lot of my keys to dieting don’t actually take food away. For me, that is so important! I’ve had enough food taken away that I’m going to take pleasure in all food that doesn’t make me feel bad (in moderate ways, of course). Take salad dressing, for instance. Since I’ve started using wine vinegar I’ve been making my own salad dressing and it does contain sugar. But, as long as I don’t saturate my salads, it’s a healthy treat. See my recipe below. It’s been modified from a recipe I found only (sorry, don’t know where it came from).

Wine Vinegar Italian Dressing

• 6 tb oil
• 2 tb white wine vinegar
• 2 tb parsley
• 1 tb lemon or lime juice
• 1/4 tsp dried minced garlic
• 1 tsp dried basil
• ¼ tsp dried crushed red pepper
• Pinch dried oregano
• 2 tsp sugar, honey, or agave nectar (might try Splenda as a sub)

Fitness Goals For 2010 and Beyond, Plus Yeehaw Pralines

So now that’ I’ve accomplished the big half-marathon goal, what’s next and why? I have a few short-term and a few long-term goals in mind. It’s important for me to have fitness goals to keep me from growing stagnant, especially in my run. It’s easy to say, get sick with a cold (hmm…that sounds rather familiar), be forced to eliminate exercise for a week, and then not really go back out there for a run on a 35 degree day because it doesn’t sound all that fun. It’s really easy. But when I make a goal for myself, it forces me to get back out there and keep training. The goals don’t have to be extreme either. It could be, “I want to decrease my time running the mile by 10-20 seconds” or “I’m going to walk one more block in addition to my regular walk every three days.” So, instead of just running and generally exercising in order to ward off the allergies, which almost seems a little too much like popping a pill, I like to train for a race every now and then.

Now, I’m not sure if Kevin and I’ll be ready for the Striders Duathlon below on April 18 because we haven’t even aired up the tires on the road bikes. We’ve mainly been using the recumbent stationary bike, and that’s not quite the same; doesn’t use the same muscle groups and it’s easy to overheat and then lower the resistance because you don’t have that natural wind that comes from using a real bike.

Short-Term Goals

• Striders Duathlon, San Angelo, TX: http://www.ironheadrp.com/striders/index.html
• DF Ranch Triathlon, Sweetwater, TX: https://fastfeetracing.com/df_Ranch_Triathlon.html
• Prude Ranch Races Half Marathon: http://www.halfmarathons.net/usa_half_marathons_texas_prude_ranch_races_half_marathon.html
• ASU Turkey Trot 2010

Long-Term Goals

• Run a 10:20 pace Half Marathon (don’t know if that’s going to happen with the hilly Prude Ranch Race that Trina is wanting to run)
• Run a Full Marathon (preferably on relatively flat ground)

Now that I’ve got some goals, it’s good to have some comfort food too. Below is a recipe that my mom and I created on New Year’s Eve, 2006. It’s milk free, gluten free, soy free, and egg free. These are extra rich and sugary, but if you freeze the batch you can eat them over a long period of time and not feel too guilty like I did when I scarfed down at least 3 or 4 (or was it 5 or 6 or 7 or 8) after making them. If you’re from Texas, pralines are a tradition, and there’s no need to go without them when you’ve got food allergies! It’s been modified from a local German cookbook that my mom’s had for years (the recipe’s called Texas Pralines or Texanische Pralinen). This recipe is also good with walnuts and other similarly softish nuts).

Yeehaw (…I hence forth call them) Pecan Pralines

• 2 cups sugar
• ¾ cup coconut milk (in the can; look for it in the Asian food section at Wal-mart)
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 1 ½ cups pecans
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp coconut oil

Cook first three ingredients together in a heavy-metal pot (without non-stick surface) until the syrup forms a “soft ball” in water (which is about at 235 degrees F). Remove from stove and add the last three ingredients. Beat until mixture begins to hold its shape. Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper and let cool.