We are in

It took just over a year, but we are living in the little house.

It's amazing when I think that we did all of this ourselves. Bruce did most of it. We had about a week (twice) with our good friend who came out and helped put the Hardie board up for siding, and each son took a turn helping also.

There is still a lot the we need to do but the first building (phase 1) is mostly done!  Since this photo was taken we have completed the stairs down but we have a punch list about a mile long which includes painting the exterior and putting in a few more shelves and finishing the interior window frames...

We have collected so much water that the tanks are full and, although I still conserve, it's good to know that we are not in any danger of running out in the next several months.

I love my kitchen sink.  I'm happy to have a proper stove with a double oven again.

And a dishwasher.  I'm glad to have a dishwasher again.

Now if we could do a little something about the mud.  That's on the list, but I don't think it's going to be dealt with very soon.

It's not that you don't have time.

We all have 24 hours in the day, right?  The same number of hours are available to everyone.

And yet, "I don't have time" is the number one reason that people say they don't exercise. I think it's more likely that the real reason people don't workout 's that exercise is uncomfortable.

And for some people, it's not just uncomfortable, it's very painful. And when it's painful we have to avoid it. We're taught to listen to our body to avoid getting injured so what could be wrong with that?

We all do whatever we can to avoid pain, right?  We watch out for cars before we cross the street and we don't touch a hot stove, and avoid cutting ourselves with sharp cooking implements.

The truth is, exercise is uncomfortable and most people don't want to be uncomfortable.

And the truth is most people don't want to lose muscle and bone mass, either.

The good news here is that there is a way to exercise that is not painful.  It takes a little bit longer to reach your weight loss or fitness goals, but you can train your body gently first and get it used to doing a little bit of work and then slowly increase the amount of work you do so that you can avoid injury.

Eventually, you'll want to be uncomfortable. You'll look forward to the struggle of lifting a heavier weight or walking (or running!) and extra mile.

But first be gentle with yourself.

If you haven't been exercising, try doing sun salutations. Not the jump-back kind. The gentle kinds.  Even try it in a chair, sitting down. Go for a walk. Slowly increase your mileage and then increase your speed.

Give yourself 3 months to get used to moving and then you'll see that you get used to it.

I have some very gentle sun salutations on video on FB if you you'd like to try those...

https://www.facebook.com/RasaYogaTherapy/videos

Where have you been?

Have you been on vacation recently?

Do you love to travel?

I do.  I mean, I love living here in the beautiful Hill Country of Texas, but I love visiting other places and especially taking an active vacation.

Like bicycling in Italy, yoga training and meditation in India... you know, those kinds of vacations.

Bruce and I love taking trips that keep us moving...  We actually eat a lot more while we are on vacation than at any other time, but we do not sit around and snack on things just out of boredom.  So, although neither of us are trying to lose weight, we always do.

We walk more and explore the city we are visiting.

Something I do every once in a while is to act as if I'm a tourist in my own city.  Do you ever do that?  It's cheaper than flying to Europe.

Or India.  Or Italy.

I do it, but I should do it more often.

I feel like I've been to the San Antonio museums, but maybe I will sign up for a tour.  San Antonio has a walking tour of one of the historic districts.  I don't live in San Antonio, but it's pretty close by.  I wouldn't ride bikes in the city, but it's pretty easy walking.

I still need to explore Bandera. It's not a very walking-friendly town, but there is a frontier museum here.  And dude ranches...

I think I'll grab a friend and get outside. Maybe go to the park and walk this morning before it gets too hot...

Have an awesome day!

Heart Rate Training and Weight Loss

Does heart rate training help you lose weight?

The short answer is yes, definitely.  But even if you don't want to lose weight and just want to get more fit, stronger, or look better in a bikini, heart rate (HR) training is a logical, systematic approach that helps make sure that you don't overtrain and ultimately hurt your cardiovascular system, or under train and have little to no result.

There are two approaches to finding your maximum HR that you can do on your own without special equipment.  Really there's many more, but I'm just going to write about two of the approaches today.

The simplest approach is based on your age and you just use the 220-your age equation.  This would mean that every year your maximum HR is lower and lower. For instance my maximum HR this year is  220-52=168.

In 2002, researchers at the University of New Mexico looked at 40 different formulas to find the most accurate way to calculate maximum heart rate without special equipment and here's what they found:

1. Multiply your age with 0.685
2. Take 205.6 and subtract the result from the first calculation
3. That's your max

Here's mine:
52 X 0.685 = 35.62
205.6 - 35.62 = 169.98 or rounded up to 170

Not much different, really.  There's another one, using the Karvonen formula that takes into account your resting HR which gives you another number - a sort of buffer - which explains why my heart rate is sometimes much higher than my theoretical max.

Heart rate training can help us build a strong foundation.  We call it building an aerobic base.  So even before I have my clients do much in the way of strength training, I like to have them spend at least one week building an aerobic base.

Aerobic base training starts with finding that theoretical maximum heart rate then setting ranges or zones.  The goal is to slowly get the HR into the zone you want to work in, then maintain that HR for a specific amount of time.

For the first week of  training, especially for those of you who are in my challenge group - Five Days of Focus - we are going to stay at or below 85% of the maximum HR for thirty minutes.

If you're new, you'll want to stay at 50-60% of your maximum HR. In fact, the first day of training, we can all stay there.  But that's a pretty comfortable place to be, so, unless you have a medical reason, or are brand new to working out, day 2 to day 5 will be between 60-85%.

So, for me, that means today my heart rate will be staying around 85-102.  Then the rest of the week it will be somewhere between 102-144.  I'm more of a cyclist, and I find running really spikes my heart rate, so for me it's really difficult to keep my HR lower than 144.

Our goal for the week is to do our cardiorespiratory endurance activity for 30 minutes a day.  It's best to do it all at once, but you can definitely break it up into smaller increments of time. Ten minutes three times a day can be effective, or 15 minutes twice a day also works.

Figure out your route. If you're on a treadmill, you know you're not going anywhere, just go for time, but make a note of how far it says you go.  If you're outside, measure it out or use a pedometer to tell you how far you go in those thirty minutes.  At the end of the week, maybe you'll find that you are able to go further with a lower heart rate.  And that's what we mean by saying, "do more, with less."

Since the first day we are only working at 50-60%, that is about the equivalent of a warm up.  On the other days, spend a few minutes in this training zone to prepare for the harder work. It will help you be able to keep your heart rate lower.  I love to do sun salutations before a jog - it warms up the entire body...I have a short video on my Facebook page. Facebook.com/rasayogatherapy

And now explanation of why we really want to start with this...We all know that weight training is really important for reshaping the body and maintaining our bones.  I actually enjoy it more than cardio.  But the heart is a muscle, too, and it is the pump that brings all the nutrients and oxygen we need into the muscles we are working. So this week, especially my challengers, we're preparing the heart to support the work that the muscles are going to be doing to help you reach the rest of your goals.

Yes, You Can Get Stronger Even if You're Old, Older, Oldest

You can build muscle strength and endurance at any age. There's no question about that.  I was reading over some research and found myself on a news website instead of an academic one where they were trying to dispute this well-known fact.

What would be the point of that?

The fact is, progressive weight training, whether using your own body-weight or lifting weights, makes anyone stronger, at any age.  And please don't believe ABC or HealthDay, because you can get stronger at any age.

If you want to get stronger, lift heavier weights.  And, no, 10 pounds is not a heavy weight.

Toned muscles is a thing - it's just not a strong thing. It's a look thing. So if you want to achieve a bikini body go ahead and go to a fat free diet, do lots of cardio, and lift light weights.

But if you want a strong body, you have to lift heavier weight. You have to keep challenging your muscles.

Start with a light weight.  Do two or three exercises for each muscle group. Lift that weight 8-12 times.  If it's easy and that 12 time you lift it is still easy, and if you can even lift it 15 times, then you need to get a heavier weight.

The 12 time you lift should be really hard.  But in your first week, start light. This gives your tendons and ligaments time to adjust also.

You have to be progressive in your approach.  You have to keep adding a little bit of weight every time - see if you can lift more.

If you can't lift the weight at least 6  times, the weight is too heavy for you, if you're a beginner.  That's just to avoid injury.  Eventually, you'll want to do some lifts with weights that are so heavy that it is really hard to lift them more than 3 or 4 times.

Body weight training is a really good way to start getting stronger.  Post in the comment section if you would like to see some good beginner exercises to get you started.

I'm posting a link to some of the original research on people over 90 who were able to improve their walking and increase the strength in their legs.  They threw away their walkers and canes.

Do you lift weights?




JAMA. 1990 Jun 13;263(22):3029-34.
http://faculty.fullerton.edu/leebrown/PDF%20Files/Academic/Fiatarone-strength%20training%20old%20people.pdf

Vaccinations and Antibiotics

Without them where would you be?  Better off?  Or dead?

I run in a few different circles where I am able to offend a lot of different kinds of thinkers.  Some people think that all of western medical science is part of a huge conspiracy with Big Ag, Pharma, and Congress all enmeshed.

Certainly, there are some questionable relationships, right? I mean should ConAgra be financing and sponsoring the American Diatetic Association conventions and should Monsanto's lobbyists be allowed to serve as the Food Safety Czar?  There's questions about those things, right?

I had a lot of questions about our standard, mainstream science way of thinking about nutrition.  So I enrolled and completed a program that taught complementary or alternative healing and nutrition.  Now I am a certified natural health counselor.  In that program, there was a lot of work we did that looked at scientific experiments and health and examined the work of some of the natural healers and compared and contrasted methods and findings of the two groups.

I wondered which was the best approach - the complementary or the western standard?

My conclusion:  Question everything.  Get as much information as you can and then figure out what makes the most sense to you.  But when it comes to serious medical conditions - find a doctor that you can trust. You might have to go to more than one before you find the right provider.

It's pretty cynical to think that the only reason we require vaccinations for children enrolled in school is to help the business of Big Pharmaceutical companies grow and become richer.

Kids today get a lot more vaccinations. They get them at a really young age - and sometimes many at once.

Maybe that's not the way to go.

But do we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater?  Maybe we could just slow it down and change up the vaccination schedule.

I've had some really interesting conversations with concerned mothers who love their children but absolutely refuse to vaccinate their children. Against anything.  I no longer try to convince them to get the MMR or Polio vaccine because I don't think I would be very effective at changing their minds about it.  But I do ask them questions.

Some of these same moms go to the doctor at first sign of an increased temperature in their little baby and insist on antibiotics. Insist.  Despite the fact that antibiotics are become less effective because of overuse.

They insist on antibiotics because they don't want another crying baby and sleepless night.

But wait. Vaccinations are bad and just a way for pharmaceutical companies to make money. But what about antibiotics?

Where did mom go to medical school that she can insist that her child not get a vaccination and then get prescribed antibiotics at will?  Doctors cave in.  A lot.  When they don't the doctor becomes very unpopular.

There's a lot of BS out there on Facebook and in blogs.  And in the news.  People quote research from studies published in obscure journals, or worse, unpublished, undocumented findings in an n=1 experiment.

You can't extrapolate from that kind of a report.  It's a technique used by marketers.

Did you vaccinate your babies?
How do you feel about your kids going to school where there are unvaccinated children?


Comment below. I'd love to hear your point of view.

Are They Really Just Jealous?

Is it true?

When people criticize or point out flaws in other people, does that really mean they're jealous?  Was Sophia jealous of Jayne?  Or was she genuinely concerned?  Or maybe intrigued?

Are mean people jealous people?

I don't know. I think maybe sometimes it might be true.  But sometimes they might just be saying what they think.

I see that on Facebook a lot.  People say what they think.  Sometimes they argue.  And sometimes they'll say oh, you're just jealous.

Like the other day I read on someone's FB feed that their friend was offering an ebook.   I never heard of the author of the ebook.

Not saying she's not a great writer or an expert in her field.

I just never heard of her.

The ebook was being offered for something like $67.  It still seems like a lot to me.  But I didn't say anything.  For once.

I read some of the other comments on that post about the ebook and one person said, wow $67 is a lot of money for a book from someone I never heard of.

The people on that page said she was jealous and negative. The original poster told her if she didn't have a right to say it wasn't worth the money if she hadn't even read it.

Was she jealous?  Was I jealous for agreeing with her that the book cost too much?

I don't know - I kind of don't think so.  I haven't paid $67 for a book since I graduated college.

Someone here in this little town removes all the flyers advertising my free workout group.  That's stealing.  I paid for the flyers public bulletin boards. Then they all disappeared.  Twice.

Are the thieves jealous that I'm working for free?  Would they be okay if I started charging money?

Or maybe it's the photograph on the flyer.  They're jealous of me?

Or maybe they're just mean.

According to my yoga training, we're supposed to have disregard for the evil people. Don't hang around mean people.  Write them off.

But what if they're taking down your signs?