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Clara Showalter

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Clara Showalter

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Acts of faith- religion and fitness

13 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by Clara K. Showalter in Current events

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365, clara k.showalter, faith, fitness, lent, life, Musings, religion, workouts

Before I started working out, I’d look at pictures of bodybuilders and figure competitors and cringe. How on Earth could someone do that to his body? Who could find the tight skin, bulging muscles, and prominent veins attractive?

jay_cutler

Jay Cutler, Mr. Olympia

After I started my own fitness journey, I started to understand just how much work it took to get to that point. It requires discipline, dedication, and a boat load of patience to get yourself to the point where you can compete, to say nothing of win a bodybuilding competition. Dropping your body down to single digit body fat percentages is incredibly hard. I grew to admire the tenacity of the person who could push her body to that point.

Yet when I say this to people outside of the fitness world, I get a look that says, “Girl you cray cray.” It’s hard for people to understand that you can respect and admire the work, without wanting to push yourself to that extreme level.

As I walk the path of a returned to the fold Catholic, I get much of the same vibe. From my non religious friends I get incredulous looks, and scathing comments.  How can I participate in something that sucks the brains out of normally intelligent people? How can I condone the actions of the Catholic Church hierarchy regarding abuse, gays, women’s rights, and the list goes on. How can I as a sane, rational person listen to the tripe spewed out on Sundays?

stt

Change it around and the questions are remarkably similar to questions I got while losing weight. It boils down to a discussion of faith. When you start a weight loss journey, it’s an act of faith. The research shows that there’s no predicting who will maintain weight loss over time. Almost 90% of the folks who lose weight, regain it within five years. So stepping out and making the changes is an act of faith. You believe, without concrete proof, that you will be successful. It’s really not that different from a willingness to believe in a higher power without concrete proof of existence.

Faith is an exercise in fidelity to your own promises, and that’s something that is vital when you are working to improve fitness or lose weight. There are many different ways to lose weight. In the same way, there are multiple ways to look at the world around you. At some point in time, you select systems of weight loss and fitness which work with your lifestyle and personal values. Religious faith is similar.

In both cases there are things you may not like or agree with. I don’t have to like the fact that cardio is an element of my fitness program. However if I want to do a half marathon, I do need to accept it. I may not like parts of Catholic doctrine, but I do need to accept that it’s part of the system. In both cases I struggle with integrating various elements into my life.

Notice how both religion and fitness talk about practice? I can look at a bodybuilder and admire the work it takes to get there. I can look at a religious and admire the oath of obedience, even if it’s something I’m not at a point where I’m willing to tackle it.

Life isn’t perfect. If you look to live a perfect life in any aspect, you will be let down. Fitness and religious faith are good reminders that life is not perfect, and that you can be perfectly happy learning to live with that imperfection. Learning to let go of a constant desire for perfection is one of the keys to finding a happy life.

Admire those who have skills and strengths you don’t. Accept that you don’t have to have those skills and strengths to be happy.

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Mid Week Prep

22 Thursday Apr 2010

Posted by Clara K. Showalter in Books, Fitness, Food and Drink, Weblogs

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fitness, food rules, michael pollan, prep, workouts

Doing some quick food prep for the end of the week. My mom is going to be in town (Hi Mom!), and I want to make sure that I've got some basic food in place. Nothing too fancy here.

Irish soda bread

Black beans, to be made into

Bison chili (With locally sourced bison of course).

Workout today was from Fit to Curl:

Chest
Pushups (15)
DB Swiss Ball Press (15)
DB Flyes (15)

Back
Pullovers
(15)
One Armed Row (15)
Bent over row (15)

2 circuits, 90
seconds rest between.

To go with the curling workouts, my curling broom showed up today. So now I can actually start pretending like I know what I'm doing!

Quest for Recovery

21 Wednesday Apr 2010

Posted by Clara K. Showalter in Books, Fitness, Food and Drink, Weblogs

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fitness, food rules, michael pollan, milk, recovery, workouts

So post workout recovery is a big deal in the health and fitness business these days. There's a wide range of products out there designed to speed nutrients back into a depleted body.

After a workout, your body is primed to use nutrients in an optimal manner. Think of it like stoking a fire. If you feed it quality kindling when it's just starting, you get a good hot burn going. If you just rely on the fuel you have there without kindling, it burns, but maybe not as hot. So getting good fuel in after the workout can really help your body burn fat, build new muscle, and generally look good.

The problem with all these spiffy products out there for post workout recovery? Not a one of them meets the Food Rules. Nutritional supplements of this type are almost all man made, modern products. Not a bad thing, but it does make it difficult when you are trying to play the Food Rules game. After all, part of the idea is that this is supposed to be challenging.

Tuesday's workout is generally a nasty one. I do stair intervals mixed in with wall throws. In other words, I run up and down a flight of stairs five times, then go and toss a medicine ball against a wall 20 times. Repeat. On the final series (also called a set) I finish the 20 throws and then keep throwing until I drop the ball. I've got to beat the number of extra throws from the week before. If I drop the ball, it's up and down the stairs one more time.

Who's the crazy trainer who came up with that? Err, yeah, moving right along here…

So last night was 35 stairs, 140 throws, then 32 bonus throws. Ow, ow, ow and ow. I was a veritable puddle of Clara goo post workout.

After a workout of that intensity, it's really uncomfortable to eat solid food. It's also 11 o'clock at night, which again is not a prime time to consume solid food for me. So I've been experimenting with milk. I've got my cool low heat pasteurized, no growth hormone and no homogenization moo cow juice. It's exceptionally tasty,and I regularly have to fight the cats off my glass. That never happens with the old milk. (Note to self, if your cats don't like the dairy product, might be an issue.)

It's worked okay the last couple weeks. Last night was a little different. It's starting to get hotter out. My core temperature was still a bit up. Milk and hot weather…let's just say it's no longer my preferred beverage. More critically, my stomach does not prefer it.

So I am again looking for something that will work after this late workout. Right now I'm stumped. The heat is only going to get worse as the summer goes on here in Austin.

Suggestions welcome.

Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food

19 Monday Apr 2010

Posted by Clara K. Showalter in Books, Fitness, Food and Drink, Weblogs

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chicken, fitness, food rules, health, meals, meat, michael pollan, workouts

Thomas Jefferson is often credited with the idea that meat should be used as a flavoring or special occasion food. Michael Pollan has taken the Jeffersonian idea and given it a rule for posterity. Rule number 23- treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food.

Now Americans are known the world over for our rather prodigious consumption of critter. Over the past 10 years there's been an explosion of protein oriented diets which focus on using large amounts of animal based protein as a method to help with weight loss. Now I can give you chapter and verse on protein pros and cons. That's a subject for a different day.

Looking from a strictly personal level, I like meat. I like how it tastes. As I've mentioned before I know good and well where it comes from. Since starting this project, my meat related expenditure has gone up. Way up. I've gone from spending $3 on a pound of extra lean ground beef to spending $7 on grass fed and finished ground beef. I used to spend $10 on 5 pounds of chicken tenderloin, now I spend $16 on outside free range chickens who give me about a pound and a half of usable meat. So there's been a big jump. By necessity, my meat consumption has moved into the realm of flavoring. I can't afford to eat in 3 meals a day.

Yet I get higher quality meats which actually have real flavor to them. I mean 4 oz of an incredible chicken, lemon and oregano sausage can leave me totally pleased with life. I'm not just consuming to consume. I'm consuming for the joy of having a well crafted food item.

Disassembling a chicken last week took me a good 45 minutes. It wasn't just a case of mindlessly tossing my frozen chicken parts into the Foreman Grill. Every bite of that chicken reminds me of the effort involved. I kept the bones and scraps to make stock (a future adventure).

It's hard at times to be thinking so much about what and why I'm eating. I kind of miss the auto pilot I was on. At the same time, there's all this new scenery I'm getting a chance to explore. Like they say, the joy is in the ride.

Quick note on workouts and food-

Workouts for now are coming from Fit to Curl, which is written by
Olympic Gold Medalist curler John Morris and Dean Gimmell. I'm into
curling at the moment, it's fun, and these are athletic performance
based workouts.

20 Minutes of interval training. (Not the same
as HIIT, the intervals here aren't supposed to drive me to death)
CORE
WORKOUT- 2 circuits (starting with 12 reps)

Plank (hold 2
seconds, release, rehold)
Crunch with fast hands (crunch then hold
position for 20 seconds while moving hands up and down about 10 inches)
Leg
Raise (floor based)
Oblique crunches
Windshield wipers (not good
for people with back issues)

Meals-

Steel cut oats, oat bran,
blueberries, 2 whole pasture raised eggs, local mushrooms, local spinach
Black
bean burger, home made Irish soda bread, 1/2 tsp butter, spinach
Granola
(cranberries, oatmeal, coconut, coconut milk, honey, almonds, walnut
meal), spinach
Apple, 25 almonds
Sardines (in an olive oil, sherry
vinegar mix) avocado, spinach, tomato
Grapefruit, greek style yogurt (I take a quart of plain yogurt without extras, toss it into a dishcloth on a strainer and let it drain out overnight.)

(Oh!
And Sunggle Bug got adopted this weekend! YAY!)

Traveling the world- chorizo en sidra

02 Friday Apr 2010

Posted by Clara K. Showalter in Books, Fitness, Food and Drink, Weblogs

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chorzio, cider, cooking, fitness, food rules, michael pollan, spain, workouts

So I started this project out with minimal clue about how you really eat. I know what macronutrients should go in what combination according to conventional US fitness and nutrition wisdom. Yet eating according to macros is pretty unsatisfying. So I kept looking. What does it mean to eat? Moreover, how do you put together seasonal meals? I mean for years I've lived via grocery store. Heck I can basically eat the same thing day in and day out. It's one of the ways I got my weight back under control. But that's not how you eat or experience food at it's best. The more I looked around the US and found we've got a pretty jacked up set of eating traditions. So I started looking to Europe. That part of the world has a substantially lower rate of obesity, and most parts of Europe retain a much stronger cultural identity.

I picked up an AWESOME book series called Culinaria. Do check out the inside of the book. These books basically take various nations and break down their eating traditions and foods. Based roughly on the climate of the Central Texas region, I decided I'd start by looking at the foods of Italy and Spain to get a rough idea of some ways that I can start putting meals together. Both countries have regions with longer growing seasons, access to seafood, and quality beef, pork, and poultry. 

After a couple weeks of tinkering to get some basics in place, I took the plunge into a specific regional dish. This one is Chorizo en sidra. Chorizo sausage in cider.

The Asturias region of Spain is located in the north, close to France and Basque country. Historically the folks in this part of the world were shepherds, farmers, and fishermen. Regional specialties include cheese, more cheese, cider and sausage. The pig is an amazing animal. You can literally use every part of the pig from snout to trotters. Only thing you can't use is the oink. I correctly butchered hog can provide a wide range of food items both for sale (hams) and for family use and storage (bacon and sausages). These higher fat meats were vital to help keep people going through the winter seasons. Keep in mind, back in the day you didn't have your local Mega Mart. If you didn't have food that was nutritionally dense in storage, come winter you were going to starve.

Sausage is one of the first things you give up when you start a diet. It's full of fat which is evil! It's not actually evil. It's a very high energy food. Like anything, in moderation it's fine. In theory. Overcoming the years of FAT EVIL is taking a little work. So I decided tackling a sausage dish was a good start.

My sausage of choice is an andouille sausage from Whole Foods. It's not chorizo, but I couldn't find any. Next best. Sidra, or cider in Asturias is a similarly big deal. Since my access to Spanish cider is limited, I've got a bottle of Woodchuck Dark from Vermont. (Hey, I couldn't find anything Texas made. Shush!).

Recipe is simple. One pound sausage, three cups cider. Pop into a terra cotta dish and boil until liquid reduced by half. Again, lacking in terra cotta, but I do have a spiffy Le Creuset dish that works.

Chorizosidra

The result! Okay, so it's not overly pretty. It also wasn't incredibly tasty. The spice from the sausage quickly overpowered the cider. I think it's a function of poor sausage choice on my part. But, I'm interested enough that I think it's worth trying again. I can also see where it's an excellent winter dish. Because it was hot and humid today. This ended up being way too heavy to eat with ease. So this works onto the rotation as a try later in the year dish.

In a completely unrelated note, I need to buy a water filter. What's coming out of my tap currently is not helping with the taste factor for my happy foods. 

So the night is being finished off with a nice 150 wall tosses with my new medicine ball. Wall tosses are just what they sound like. You take medicine ball (in this case 4 pounds) and toss it at the wall. It bounces back, you catch and throw again. Sounds easy yes? No, not so much. But it's quite fun and a good way to finish off the day.

Yeah I know, I'm a little odd.

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