Metabolism

Metabolism: What is it?

Wiki Answers gives an understandable definition for those of us who are not scientists:

The Scientific definition of metabolism is the rate in which the body makes or breaks chemical bonds.

Metabolism is the rate in which one's body burns off and utilizes calories. Everyone has a set metabolic rate that is typically determined by one's genetics. Yet, that rate can be changed through exercise which will increase one's metabolism. Generally speaking, one would hope to have a higher metabolic rate so that the consumed calories will burn off quicker and will not become fat in the process.

Hope to have a higher metabolic rate? I can assure you that mine has slowed in recent years. I've been thinking about metabolism a fair bit recently, trying to come to terms with the fact that my body seems to get used to levels of food and exercise, causing my rate to slow again. How can one jumpstart metabolism?

Again from Wiki Answers, there is a lot of basic information out there. This page gives ten basic bits of advice on metabolism that pretty much matches things I've read elsewhere.

1. Build lean body mass (this means strength training)
2. Aerobic exercise
3. Eat enough
4. Eliminate sugar
5. Eat breakfast
6. Include spicy food
7. Drink hot green tea
8. Drink water
9. Avoid stress
10. Get enough sleep

As you know, not all of those are completely controllable. And others are downright hard to control even if it's possible in theory. Is there anything else to the equation besides the above?

Jump Start Your Metabolism explains that our bodies don't use energy for every task equally. This page explains that there are three main factors: The rate at which your body uses energy for vital processes, such as breathing (i.e. your basal metabolic rate, or BMR); the rate at which you burn energy during physical activity; the rate at which you burn energy during food digestion (otherwise known as the thermogenic effect of food).

I've got a few thoughts of my own on metabolism that I'll be exploring here on and off over the next while as I have the time and the inclination to study and research what the experts say. Any questions or comments on metabolism? Anyone interested in learning about this with me?

Seedy Whole Wheat Bread

I bake a 4-loaf batch of whole wheat bread most weeks, and this is the recipe I use most often:

Seedy Whole Wheat Bread
In a large bread bowl, mix together:
1/2 cup honey
1.5 Tbsp salt (or as you prefer)
3 cups rolled oats I always use large flake, but you can use quick oats
1 cup wheat germ
3/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup flax seeds
6 cups boiling water

Stir this all and set it aside for 15 minutes, until the water is a good temperature for yeast (baby bottle warm).

Then add:
2 Tbsp instant yeast (I use Fermipan from the bulk department)
Whole Wheat Flour (We prefer a coarse grind that we have to special-order. Right now we're able to buy it at Costco, an *Ellisons* brand.)

You may ask how much flour. Um, a bunch. I just put in a few cups, stir, add another one, stir, until it's too heavy for my wooden spoon. Then I just get in there with my hands and knead, adding flour until it's enough. Use flour to get the gunky dough off your fingers and off the spoon and off the sides of the bowl. When it's getting so it isn't too sticky, pour a little olive oil in your hands and knead a bit more. You may find you need a bit more flour after that, still, but you don't want more than it needs. I know, that's vague, but this is the part that's hard to TELL, and easier to SHOW and FEEL.

At that stage I blop the ball of dough onto my table, wash out the bowl, dry it, smear it with olive oil, and blop the dough back in to rise for an hour or two (till doubled in size). I cover it with a damp teatowel while it rises to prevent the top drying out. Beware you don't use a good one, as the oil never comes completely back out.

When it's risen well, out it comes again and you divide it into four equal parts. My mom used to actually weigh them on a kitchen scale. I just heft the various ones a few times, pulling bits of dough and adding to others as seems best. Then I take one ball of dough and smack it against the table a few times. Great for letting off steam :P but it also eliminates gas bubbles from taking over the bread. I smoosh it out, roll it up, pinch the ends, and stick it in a loaf pan I've spritzed with Pam.

When all four are in pans, I put the damp teatowel over them again. This rise goes faster, under an hour. Heat oven to 375, stick the loaves in for about 45 minutes. The bread is done when you knock on it and it sounds hollow.

Take them out of the pans to cool. Once they're cool, I usually slice mine, bag them, and toss them in the freezer--except for the one that seems to be half-eaten at this stage! Frozen slices are easy to break off and thaw quickly on the counter or can go straight in the toaster. Of course you don't have to pre-slice the loaves but it makes life easier for the next week, and the bread board and knife don't have to be out constantly.

Any questions? Enjoy!

(If you also would like me to post Sourdough Whole Wheat Bread or Basic Whole Wheat Bread, just ask. I make them fairly often, too. As well as occasional Rye...and Foccacia...and other types!)

One Year

This past weekend it was one year since I signed up for Fly Lady. I'd come off a few months of kitchen renovating (still incomplete), my mother's stroke, and a vacation and realized--with shock--one day that my house was a disaster from one end to the other.

I spent the Canada Day long weekend (which Jim had to work) mucking out the house and ended up Monday evening loading recycling and garbage and thrift store drop-offs into the truck, and washing the porch floor as I backed out of a sparkly clean (ish) house. And wondering why I couldn't keep it that way.

Fly Lady has been a big help but of course I've picked and chosen what of the system to do and what to ignore. Mostly I ignore all calls to clean/ sort/ declutter the front entry and porch. Mine just scares me. It always has and I think it will until the day we renovate that part of the house (up soon after the never-ending kitchen). I've done the daily missions on a hit-or-miss system for most of the year.

I've had a couple epiphanies that really ought to have been more basic to me. Fly Lady talks about Blessing My House once a week--basically a quick cleaning blitz that leaves the surface company-ready. Coupled with the daily missions, it pretty much keeps things running smoothly. Only it takes me much more than the hour Fly Lady allots to it. Finally had a DUH moment. She isn't using that hour to TIDY the house and then clean it. She's assuming that I've been actually DOING the dailies and keeping the hot spots picked up. Well. What a concept. She's likely right--the actual cleaning can be done in an hour!

I also learned that I'd done a decent job on the surface and even a bit below on the rooms that are on the Fly Lady rotation (if we pretend the front entry doesn't exist--and I'm good at pretending that.) What I wasn't dealing with were the two *spare bedrooms*. One of which hubby has taken over as his home office, and the other was mine. Except that I moved the computer desk downstairs several years ago (then booted it out entirely when we went to two laptops.) Boxes from the (unfinished) kitchen renovation lived in there, plus a couple boxes from cleaning out my mom's apartment last spring. And some craft projects I'm apparently never going to finish. And...yep, clutter.

When Hanna and Craig moved home at the beginning of May I was forced to actually LOOK at this room and it was embarrassing. Pretty much everything had to come out so they had room to set up their office in it (they're sleeping in the folks' motorhome, and the upstairs room is their living room). We allowed me to keep the closet (small), my Rubbermaid rolling drawers, and one narrow chest of drawers (that replaces the desk drawers from the desk that is no more). There was a LOT of junk that needed to go. Once again with the trash, recycling, and thrift store. The treadmill that I never use went out to the guest cabin (that still has a lot of cabinets in it!)--we can't get rid of that because it belongs to the folks, who don't use it but can't get rid of it. The uncomfortable futon got turfed.

A bunch of stuff from in there landed in Jim's little office, and after a few weeks he said--um---I need to be able to get in the door. So one rainy weekend I completely emptied the hall closet (big mess, wow) and really worked through what NEEDS to live in there to make room for the stuff that had wound up in Jim's room. Why did I have so many random sheets when there's no way we have room for that much company? Some got trashed, some thrift stored. Things are somewhat sorted out up there. For now. Once the kids leave at the end of August, I need to be careful not to spread back out and be lazy.

Altogether, though, the house is a huge improvement. The biggest thing has been the daily routines, though, especially the evening routine. I used to be bad for leaving dirty dishes out, but that's rarely an issue now. The coffee pot gets set in the evening, and lunches made. Supper decided upon, usually. I'm not up to full bore menu planning yet, but I rarely stop at the grocery store at 5 pm to decide what's for dinner anymore. And when the home and people go to bed actually prepared for morning, the getting-ready-for-work runs more smoothly. So those routines are absolute winners.

Right now I'm trying to deal with the garden. Easy to say that fifteen minutes a day would keep the yard work under control. I haven't quite worked it into my routines, I guess. But it's too hot, or too rainy, or too buggy...or something. We did a blitz weed in the garden this morning for a couple hours and now the potatoes and corn can see air again. All good.

The upshot is that while Fly Lady has not made my life perfect, I'm so grateful for how much improvement I've seen and that it really doesn't take that much effort. Maybe I'm ready for the next step. Unless the next step is my front entry. Then I'm not ready at all.

Cincinnati Chili-Style Spaghetti

It's been awhile since I posted here, but...I haven't totally forgotten this blog. Honestly. This morning hubby was watching FoodTV (for something new and different) and came across a mention of Cincinnati style spaghetti. He asked me if I'd ever heard of it, and it sounded vaguely familiar. So I googled it and came up with this recipe. I just so happened to have a package of ground beef thawing for supper without a definite plan in mind, so I decided to try it. Here's what I did. We loved it, by the way. Definitely a do-again.

Cincinnati Chili-Style Spaghetti

1.5 pounds ground beef
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1.5 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder
a few drops tobasco sauce
.5 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon salt

Saute the above together until the meat is no longer pink. If you have extremely lean meat, you might need a slosh of olive oil to keep it from sticking. Then add:

1 small onion, finely chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced or grated
1 can tomato paste
1 can tomato sauce (I used a home-canned pint jar of roasted tomato sauce)
1 cup water
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2-3 bay leaves
2 tablespoons cocoa powder

If you like a bit more heat, add a bit more chili powder or tobasco. Once this is simmering, start heating the water for pasta. The timing came out very well this way.

Makes about 4-6 servings

To serve: ladle over cooked spaghetti or linguine.

Cincinnati 3-Way: Sprinkle grated cheddar cheese over the top

Cincinnati 4-Way: A couple tablespoons of raw chopped onions, then the cheddar

Cincinnati 5-Way: Kidney beans, raw chopped onions, then cheddar

Hubby went for the 4-way. While I don't mind onions, I'm not keen on them raw, so I decided to pass on that version. However, the thought of kidney beans appealed to me (but not to him). Because i'm trying to get back to a low-GI diet, I only put a small scoop of the pasta in my plate, then about a cup of kidney beans and a good ladle of the sauce. Cheddar on top. This was to-die-for good.

Okay, now for everything else

Now that we're Walking to Somewhere, I feel like I have some accountability for getting some cardio exercise. Because of the degenerative disc disease in my neck and upper back, walking is about the best exercise I can get--and because I don't want to gain weight again, I need to do it regularly. I really think this little friendly competition is going to help a ton.

I've done an informal calibration at about 2662 steps per mile. With hubby working back in town and starting work at 8, my walking hour is between 8 and 9. We're sharing a vehicle, and most days I drop him off on my way into town, park the truck (its been 4x4 conditions lately, hence the truck not the car), and go for my walk in town. I pick him up at 12, we drive home for lunch, I drop him off for 1:00, and pick him up at 5 when we're both done. So this works pretty well for me.

A couple of days the roads were so horrid I left him the truck and walked the rest of the way: 2.2 kilometers or 1.32 miles. The downside there is I am carrying my backpack until I get to my store, then I ditch it and walk a bit longer without it. I've been averaging 4500-5500 steps before work for net days of 6000-7000.

I still need to get back in a good routine for core exercises, but one thing at a time.

Weight-wise, I'm hanging in at 148#. I've been there since...September? It barely wobbled over Christmas which is really fantastic. Honestly? If my body would like to be happy at this weight, I would like to not argue with it. I'm still twenty pounds down from my high spot of two years ago, I'm reasonably fit, and I don't hate my current clothes. Though I do miss a few of the cute things I wore last winter!

I'm keeping to a mostly low GI diet, generally speaking, while not getting carried away. (Obviously, or I'd be losing that weight again...)

We'll see what consistent walking does for me. Sadly I don't think it will remove my belly flab. It will take the core exercises to do that!

The Virtual Walk

I talked the other day about a virtual hike, and a few of us are taking the idea and running with it. Or walking with it. We've started a group blog at Walking to Somewhere. I believe EJ and Jean have expressed interest...if you (whether you are they or you are someone else!) want to get in on this, hop on over and leave a comment. If we already know you, we'll just need whatever information Blogger needs to add your name to the list of folks who can post there. If we don't already know you, or you aren't sure we do, please email me at valerierco AT yahoo DOT ca with Virtual Walk in the subject line and give me a heads-up who you are.

We're still talking about *where* we'll walk. We're wondering if the Appalachian Trail might be too big a bite for the first round! :P Maybe try the West Coast Trail? Google it... Suggestions welcome!

If you want to participate, you'll need walking shoes and a pedometer. Mark out a walking route with your vehicle so you know the exact distance it is, then walk it and let the pedometer count the steps. Figure out how many of your steps makes a mile. If you don't have a pedometer (though they're fairly cheap, really...) you'll be more tied to the same route that you've measured out with the vehicle. I plan on counting my steps all day long, not only *the walk* part of it. At the moment, my walk is about 5000-5500 steps and the rest of my day is less than 1000, on average. I haven't figured out the miles that is yet. Too much snow to haul the car out! :P

I'm also thinking of buying Mar's progress bar thingie from Holly Lisle's shop and tucking it in the sidebar at the walking blog, so I can update my mileage there visibly. You don't have to, but you can.

(I'm hoping to make this really a part of my everyday life for years to come. I wish I could sit in a rocking chair and rot, but I'd get too fat rotting so this is it.)

Any other ideas? Considerations? Post them here or over there!

Wow I've been bad at this

How's my life?

Er.

That about covers it.

I got a pedometer last Friday and now I can see how lazy I am. Like I had no other clues. But seriously, around 1600 steps on Monday? That's practically nothing. So I had to check how many steps I get on the treadmill--see, the thing is working already! And that's about 1200 steps a mile, which was about 20 minutes. Sheesh, it's been a L-O-N-G time since I was on the thing. Like a month.

It's a wonder I haven't gained weight, but yay I'm steady at 148. Not that that is where I want to be steady at, but anyway. I've been in the neighborhood for a few months and it beats gaining more.

So the glasses thing--Val's little nightmare. Again the gal disappeared into the back room for a long period of time. Again with the muffled sounds back there. Again with the new arm not fitting. I suspected that would happen. I mean, aren't all the left arms for glasses' style XYZ in the same bin at HQ? Why should one be any different than another? But they seemed downright shocked.

And then she says: do you have any other glasses you can wear? And the response was quick and emphatic. NO! She wanted to send these away to be *fixed*. I suggested they order complete new frames and exchange the lenses when the frame comes. Surely that will work? She agreed. All the reefing and twisting they did to try to make the arm fit--I'm happier with all new frames by this stage. At least I hope I will be.

For the record, black electrical tape holds up the best long term. Don't use duct tape, it ruins the finish (I already knew it would so didn't go that route.) Scotch tape lasts only a couple days. Just in case you cared.

So hubby is currently resting up for his very last day of work at the mines Thursday. He'll be home late tomorrow with his honkin' HUGE tool boxes in the back of the truck. They're putting them in with a forklift. How he'll get them out at GM I don't know. He doesn't think they have a forklift there...

So my life is changing again. Mostly for the good, but certainly we will be adjusting. Back when he last worked here we shared a vehicle and we're talking about doing it again--though now we have two--just to save fuel. His hours are 8-12, 1-5 Monday to Friday. Mine are 9-12, 1-5 Monday to Friday. I would drop him off at work (he's enroute for me, about 2/3 of the way to my job), pick him up to come home for lunch, drop him off, pick him up.

It just means I have an hour to kill in the morning. Last time we did this, I got a Curves membership and used it at 8 most mornings. I let my Curves membership lapse in the fall and I'm not a hundred percent sure I want to renew it.

Meanwhile a new gym opened up in town a few months back and I stopped in today to look around and check out fees. I'm thinking I might get a three month pass and see how it goes. I could do cardio a couple mornings a week and weights a couple mornings, if my neck and upper back are up for it. That'll be the clincher. There is another gym and I've walked in the door a few times over the past seven years, glanced around and walked right back out. Totally uninviting and I have no idea why. Just I'm not going there!

At any rate, it'd be a good use of the extra hour. And unlike Curves, they actually have a shower in the back room so I could do better than a swab before going to work. I can shower pretty quick. And see, I'd be saving money not showering at home...

Yeah, watch me try to convince myself this is a good idea! :P

So back to this pedometer thing. Anyone got one? Do you use it daily? Do you obsess about how different the days are? I've had days from 1600 to nearly 6000. What's a good goal?

Sometimes I read C.E. Murphy's blog and she posted this a bit ago. She's joined the Eowyn Challenge which apparently is a walk around Middle Earth, like Frodo did in LOTR. Problem. I haven't read LOTR, and although I occasionally think I ought to, I haven't really convinced myself yet.

Anyone else looking for some kind of walking challenge? Dunno. Always more fun with companions, even virtual ones.

Oh yeah, FlyLady. Been doing her. Kitchen last week, but I ought to clean the oven, maybe on the weekend. Don't have the energy on a work night. Bathroom week is going fine. I decided to buy myself a new bathroom garbage can today but--um--didn't. Maybe tomorrow. The lengths to which we will go to not wash the one we have.

Blessed the house tonight right after I got home. Don't know how that will work when hubby is living at home. It's hard to clean around someone, and he does have the outside chores so it's reasonable for me to do the inside myself. We share the garden. But his daily chores right now don't take long enough for me to do the blessing. I guess we'll see next week.

That's it.

Tuesday/Wednesday January 8/9

A very organized Tuesday in which I remembered to take a lunch to work but forgot to make a mocha. And of course still didn't work out. And the customers rediscovered that we're open again. And the weather, and therefore the roads, were nasty again.

Breakfast: shredded wheat and a banana. BOUGHT a mocha!
Lunch: tuna (cats fought over the juices in the morning, poor things), Wasa crackers, carrots, 2 oranges
Supper: Salad, baked beans. 4 Hershey kisses! :P

After I had cleaned up the kitchen (right down to shining the sink, woohoo!--and the container cupboard is still organized), I tackled the upstairs. Stripped the spare bed and started the laundry. Got all the Christmas decorations out of my closet (again) and packed all the random stacked stuff into them, put them back full.

Ran the beyootifull flylady duster over the upstairs, then the vacuum. Brought the garbage downstairs (mostly a bag of used giftwrap that had somehow been treated like gold, and receipts for Christmas gifts that didn't need to be kept now that they weren't duplicates or whatever.)

It was nice going to bed in a relatively uncluttered room.

Today: still having trouble getting rolling in the morning, so another breakfast of shredded wheat and a banana. I did remember to make (and take) my mocha though. But forgot the lunch. Sigh. I grabbed a sandwich in town (lots of sprouts, that's good, right? :P) I had a few cashews and a piece of chocolate. Supper: a pork chop and fries, salad, 2 banana muffins, and an orange.

I still have the kitchen to tidy, which will only take a few minutes. Flylady wants me to consider my small appliances. I think I'm ahead of her. Cleaned the coffeepot on Monday (it was BAD), did the toaster crumbs last week, and the microwave is good. I even cleaned the glass on the toaster oven recently. So I'm pretending I did today's mission.

Hubby's on his way home as we speak, six days off now, then two more day shifts, then DONE at the mines. Yay! (And the roads look pretty decent today too.)

And the new arm for my glasses arrived again, so we'll go up Friday and hope this one works. Patience.

Back to routines--Monday, January 7

Oh how my routines have suffered over the past few weeks. I didn't realize quite how bad it was until I went back to work.

First off, there's that alarm thing that is so easy to ignore when you haven't heard it for awhile. Then there's the scramble to cook breakfast, before realizing you don't have time to eat it.

Yes, I took my porridge to work again! Sad but true. Also my mocha.

The first day back wasn't too hectic. I guess that means we did a fairly good job organizing shut down in December. Hubby was home at lunch and I went home and reheated turkey bean soup and made toast. Forgot to take snacks back to work with me, but polished off the last couple pieces of chocolate that I'd left in my microwave (the only place at work I leave food, because it's sealed against critters such as mice.)

Sunday evening I'd been organized enough to put supper in the crockpot, but forgot it in the fridge in the morning. Sigh. Phoned hubby mid-morning and he got it going. When I got home from work we racked three carboys of wine (the two plum and one...rosso?...whatever it is hubby's making...), had salad and our Moroccan-style stew, then hubby headed out the door for his loooooong drive to work.

And I looked around the house and said ENOUGH. Started the dishwasher, hand-washed the stuff that didn't fit. Cleaned off every single counter in the kitchen, including the appliance garage, and wiped them down. And put the mis-placed stuff AWAY. Monday is FlyLady's house blessing day, and my house badly needed blessing. I watered plants (why is that not on her list? Don't most people have plants?), cleaned mirrors and that one interior glass door, dusted the living room and kitchen, removed the last of the juniper bunches, which necessitated moving the couch to vacuum behind it, and the last few remaining Christmas decorations--did the vacuuming, and washed the kitchen floor. The floor hadn't been too bad before the wine siphoning. :P

Oh, yes. And listened to cats snarl and hiss periodically.

Ideally, I'd have cleaned upstairs too, but I was two hours in by then and tired, so I left the rest of the house blessing for tonight. Much of the Christmas decor is randomly stacked in my bedroom still, and the spare bed needs stripped and folded back up, etc. There's plenty yet to occupy me another evening.

I need to remember my goal: get going with FlyLady as often as I stop...

Happy New Year!

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but it sure doesn't hurt to take stock of where one has been and put some goals in place.

As far as my health and fitness goes, I weigh about 12 pounds more than I did a year ago, and that makes me sad. It's possible that the mid 130s aren't my premium weight. Except for some tummy flab (name me a real woman who doesn't have some of that!) I feel reasonably fit. Wish I could fit back into the cutest of the clothes I wore last winter, but that's about it. I'm at 148# today, and I'm simply thrilled I didn't gain anything over the holidays!

I guess I was too busy (and too stressed) to do any Christmas baking. I'd also intended not to, but last year I had the same intention and yet in a two-day whirlwind I decimated that plan. This year I just couldn't work around the renovation mess in the kitchen (and didn't even get the tree decorated until the 23rd). Hanna brought a couple kinds of shortbread home (including my favorite, cinnamon shortbread) along with home-made candy. I had a few pieces but found it too sweet to eat in abundance. A good thing!

I haven't been on the treadmill in...three weeks? We've gone for several walks, one cross-country ski day (while the kids snowshoed) and two snowshoeing walks. I've eaten *normal* food, including way more potatoes than is usual for just Jim and I. And still I'm down a couple pounds from mid-December. I guess I just kept active with the cooking and the tidying and all, less sitting around. I can't think of any other reason! (But I'm not complaining.)

2007 held a reasonable amount of stress what with my nephew being deathly ill in April and my mother's stroke a week later, the kitchen renovation which still needs completing, and a flare-up of degenerative disc in the fall. Some of the good things that happened were seeing all my sisters in May, a great trip to Yellowstone to meet up with Bonnie and Mar, lots of camping, having Hanna and Craig move closer to home, and having the whole family home for five days over Christmas.

The renovation stress will remain in 2008 (probably 2009 and 2010 also...) and so will the stress of my mother's health. Her health is certainly deteriorating but she keeps hanging in there, so who knows what time line we're looking at.

Something really positive in 2008 is that Jim will be starting a new job on January 21st, right here in town. No more commuting four hours one way, no more night shifts, no more apartment at the mines, no more being away from home regularly. He'll be working at a GMC auto dealership, Monday to Friday, 8-5 with an hour for lunch. Sure, he is taking a drop in pay but it looks like we should come close to breaking even because of the expenses that will also be dropped (the apartment, the fuel, the boredom fund).

One downside for him is losing the great time off he got at the mines. Less holidays (but every weekend!), and, in fact, no vacation time at all in 2008. I have three weeks so I keep telling him all the cool stuff I'm going to do by myself!

So we are facing 2008 with optimism. It'll be good to have him home, it'll be good to have evenings and weekends together. We're looking forward to getting more involved in music at the church again--and in simply going more regularly together. Jim's looking forward to getting a puppy...and I'm hunting for enthusiasm!

For me, personally, I'd like to find a weight that I'm comfortable with and can maintain. I'd like to keep active, keep degenerative disc at bay. I'd like to get back into FlyLady as many times as I drift away. I'd like to write, revise, and submit novels--more this year than last.

I'd like my life to honor God.