Monday dawns bright and beautiful. Drew is up north and I have plans to finish that front garden today. But first, TEAM Weight Loss. Today we move through an endurance day. We start off with treadmill as usual and go through various exercises including slamming the heavy ball, rolling it from side to side, squatting and thrusting it. Then there are lunges and walking quickly at different inclines. As always it is a good workout. Maria reminds us that tomorrow is fitness test and metabolic age. Oh great, I bet I am metabolically about 102! I sure feel that way some days.
Since I do not work Mondays and my leg is aching somewhat and I have already done a pretty intense cardio workout I decide to check out the outside pool as it is such a warm and beautiful day. It is very nice and in the large pool there is only myself and one other lady (who recently had hip replacement). There are a few people in the lap pool and a few sitting around the pool catching some much needed vitamin D rays. I am just swimming around in an easy way when I see another lady enter our part of the pool. I am alarmed to see - even though the pool is not deep - that she obviously cannot swim and is trying to do something that looks like swimming. She is thrashing about and stands up sputtering. I watch her for a few minutes and realize that maybe she is trying to do a front crawl but is not doing anything really. I can't stand it so I approach her friendly like. I say Hi and ask her if she speaks english (she is asian). She giggles and says yes. I ask her if she is having problems with swimming. She says yes she doesn't know how to swim and is trying to teach herself to swim. I tell her that is awesome but if she didn't mind I would like to show her a simple stroke that may be easier for her to do since what she is doing is not swimming but more like controlled drowning. Seriously that is what it looked like. She says please I want to learn so I spend the next 40 minutes teaching this lovely lady May how to do the breaststroke. I try many ways of showing her. We sit at the side of the pool and she learns how to do the kick (frog kick) and we go over the breaststroke but as soon as she tries to swim she starts panicking and stroking 2 x for every one kick and her timing is way off. As well she can't seem to get keeping her head up so she has to stop and catch her breath. It is funny but not really since she really wants to learn. I know that the gym has lessons but she feels she would just be so far behind everyone else. After awhile she sorta gets the idea and at one point swims about 1/2 way across the pool. She is thrilled to have done that and I tell her that was awesome. She goes off to tell her husband and promises that she will practice and that the next time I see her she will be really awesome. I feel good that I helped her. It has been an awfully long time since I taught someone to swim. Maybe it was presumptuous of me but I just felt I had to do something as it was really the worse swimming I have ever seen in my life.
I see that there is an outside hottub/spa so I check that out. This is definitely a nice way to spend some time in the middle of the day. There are some hawks flying overhead and it seems that they are nesting on the roof of the gym. One seems to be scaring off crows while the other one is watching over the area. Very cool indeed.
That was a relaxing after workout morning and I hit the showers. I head home to get lunch and to work on that front garden to finish up planting etc. Nick is going to come over after work and clean up the backyard so I can start doing the gardens back there. I decide to cook us dinner and google a shish kabob recipe for pork that looks tantalizing and I have all the ingredients. While the meat is marinating I work on the front garden. By the time I finish that Nick arrives and he cleans the garden and mows the back lawn.
Have you tried to find a substitute for rice? I have tried quinoa but I am not a fan. So I googled it and found that someone suggests grating cauliflower and then microwaving it for 4 or 5 minutes. I have cauliflower so I tried it. Along with a simple green salad it makes a complete and delicious low cal/low carb dinner. On the skewers I also put fresh pineapple, red onion, portobello mushrooms and cherry tomatoes. There is a basting sauce of soy sauce, beef broth, garlic and a bit of raw sugar and some minced ginger. That is boiled until thickened. I grilled the kabobs and Nick and I sit down to enjoy the meal. He loves the whole thing and it is very filling. The cauliflower is really good and I will make that again.
It was a treat having Nick stay for dinner and he was a great help getting things done. By 8:30 he is gone and one his way to his home and I spend an hour or so on the front porch watching tv. All in all it was a pretty good day but tomorrow is looming. What will this test tell me...
Tomorrow - Fitness/Metabolic testing
Debbie
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