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?

If You Want to Live: Overcome Negative Emotions

Anxiety, depression, and anger are directly correlated with heart disease.

That's a fact.  And it doesn't even matter which comes first. It's like a cycle that can go either direction.

There's more than one scientific study that shows this to be true.  In one study, of about 300 middle aged people with coronary heart disease the researchers found that the people with a more highly developed spiritual life had better outcomes.

Spirituality is one of those confusing words that make people think about religion and God and all that. And if you don't believe in God can you still be spiritual?

The answer is yes.  At least for medical purposes.

Spirituality, for the purposes of these studies, is more about how people relate to and interact with nature and other people than it is about believing in a supernatural being.



Researchers look at:

• Meaningfulness - knowing where you fit in;
• Trust - being able to maintain inner peace;
• Acceptance of what is happening - knowing that tragedy happens in life;
• Caring about others;
• Connectedness with nature;
• Transcendent experiences - moments in time when everything seemed clear; and
• Spiritual activities - meditation, prayer, finding ways to be quiet and centered.

This one study looked at depression, anxiety, and anger.

Depression correlated with trust, perceived social support, and spiritual activities.

Anger correlated with connecting with nature and spiritual activities.

Anxiety correlated with caring about others and spiritual activities.

Spiritual Activities was the one variable that seemed to have the most overall effect on depression, anxiety, and anger.  Since these negative emotions affect heart health it's really important to find a way to address them.  And since spiritual activities had the best effect, isn't it worth taking a few minutes every day to do some of them?  Or maybe just one of them.

The truth is, meditation can be boring. It's easier to sit in meditation when you're with a group of other people also sitting in meditation.  It's kind of like a form of positive peer pressure because you don't want to be the first one to get up.

But sitting for long periods of time in lotus, or any position, can make your hips hurt.  So that classic way of meditating may not be for you.  I did it that way for years, but now I confess that I don't sit for 45 minutes in meditation anymore.  My hips are happier. And so am I.

Here are some simple spiritual activities you can do:

1. Pray - you can pray to God, or the sun, or to the trees. It doesn't matter if you think of your dead ancestors when you pray.  It just means being thankful and finding a way to give someone else credit for things.

2.  Meditate - you can just observe your breath for a a few minutes.  Sit comfortably in a chair and watch as your breath comes in and goes out. Count how many times you inhale and exhale in a minute.  Start with one minute and then the next time two minutes.  If you get distracted don't worry - everyone does. Just notice oh, I'm distracted and go back to breathing and counting.

3.  Be grateful - last year on Facebook there were all these gratefulness challenges going around. Five days of five things every day I'm grateful for.  What if you did that every day?  It's hard. But it's powerful because if you can become really grateful for the awful and difficult challenges in your life then you can really be a happy person.

4.  Forgiveness - this is also hard. But it's one of the most powerful things you can practice.  It's related to the gratefulness challenge. Think about the people who have done things that hurt you. Then visualize yourself being grateful. Don't feel sorry for them, but cultivate compassion.

5.  Study - we all feel good when we study inspirational material.  Self-help stuff counts. Or the Bible, Tao Te Ching. Zen.  This might be where you start your spiritual activities. Five minutes of listening to something positive.

Some of those are more powerful because they train your mind to focus and concentrate, but start with the one thing that appeals to you that seems the easiest.

We really do have to change the way we think and these spiritual activities can help.

Are You Destined To Be Your Parents?

Your parents were obese. Do you have to be obese, too? Or had diabetes, or bad allergies, or lupus, or bad knees?  Or mental illness?

My sister and brother and I hid in a closet while my father swung an axe around.  He destroyed  the bar he had built himself.  It was the 70’s and I think everyone had a bar in their living room. 

I remember sitting there thinking, this is stupid. Everyone here is crazy, I have to get out of here. 

A few years later, when I was 15, I did leave.

Mom died about 13 years ago and I heard that my dad died a few months after that.  They both died of heart disease. Mom had high blood pressure, dad had diabetes.

For years after I left home I waited and watched for my own kind of crazy to show up.  Mom had been in a mental hospital for a little while. I would think…am I schizophrenic yet?  I even warned my husbands to watch for it.  

Looking back I don’t think she was exactly schizophrenic. She had PTSD.  I probably did too. Who doesn’t, these days?

Both of my parents died of heart problems, so I will, too, right?

Wrong.  Or, I guess, maybe not.

Just because you have the genes for certain conditions doesn’t mean you’ll get the disease.  I’m not judging that one beautiful and famous celebrity who had her healthy breasts removed. She has the breast cancer gene and I’m not judging her because that must be pretty scary.  

Does removing her breast guarantee that she won’t get some kind of cancer?  

No.  And having the gene doesn’t guarantee that she would get cancer either.

Just like having obesity and diabetes in your family doesn’t guarantee that you’ll stay fat forever.  Or that you'll become fat.

Think about what you want in your life every day.  Good health - what does that look like?  Wealth - how does it look to you?  Why do you want that?  What does it mean to you?  

And what DON’T you want?  It's important to know this, too.  But not to dwell on that part. It just needs to be clear so that you recognize it when you see it and you can say, oh I don't want that.

Think about what you do want every single day.  Make that reason “why” stronger every single day and do something about it.  There are thousands of diet and exercise books out there. And programs you can follow.  I have a program you can follow. I can help you figure one out for yourself.  That's what I do.

Most people don’t need a super specialized diet.  Most people eat too much.  I know I eat more than I need to. 

Here's all you need to do.  Have a little good-quality protein at every meal, drink half your weight in water, and eat a lot of vegetables everyday.  Exercise for an hour a day. Do a little yoga, walk, run, lift weights.  

Oh, and walk 10,000 steps.  Don't be alarmed. 

It starts with one..

Exercise keeps me sane. What will it do for you?

Why can't I...?

People don't usually ask "Why can't I?"  We only ask ourselves that question.

What people say is "I can't because ___" fill in the blank.

Like yesterday.  I was talking to Bruce while he was getting ready for work. We don't talk much in the mornings because it's too distracting and he'll forget his wallet or something.

But yesterday I was talking to him because he told me something really scary about his blood pressure.  The silent killer.

When I think of high blood pressure I think of people who are old, or fat, or inactive. Not Bruce. He's none of those things. He's a perfectionist.

And his blood pressure is too high.

He's building us a house with his bare hands.  He's an engineer so it's being made perfectly.

I was talking to him while he was getting ready for work. I knew it was a bad time to talk but I was worried. So I told him he had to stop being such a perfectionist. He laughed and said, I can't. I've always been this way. I said, but nobody is perfect. You have to relax a little so your blood pressure won't be high.

He said you can't really change the way you are. And I said, you can change the way you think about things. No you can't.

I said, you sound like all the clients I work with who say they can't lose weight. Like they're different than everyone else.  He said I wasn't really making it better.  So I laughed.  We'll talk about it more this weekend.


For now I'll try and hide the salt. We only use the sea salt, but still.

We all have to change the way we think.  For most of my life I thought I couldn't wear sandals with the toe thong. There were thousands of cute shoes I was missing out on.  Then my friend who owns the Texas Lady Boutique said, Ida your feet aren't made any different than anybody else's. You have to start with just a few minutes at a time and get used to it.

That summer I got used to wearing thong sandals.  

I changed the way I think.

I'll try that with Bruce.  Do you need to change the way you think?

Go Ahead and Jump

I like waking up happy, don't you?  

And I like feeling great all day.  But it wasn't always easy to be happy and feel great.

My husband was an officer in the air force and our family moved a lot over the past 20-something years. My resume looks like I can't keep a job...but we were busy moving around the world like gypsies.

I found creative ways to stay healthy and happy.  It's easier to stay healthy than it is to try to find it once it's lost.

The moves were stressful. Living a military lifestyle is stressful. Eventually my health suffered.  But I got it back and the great thing is that I saw parts of the world that I may never have seen.  

I'm stronger than ever. And happier.

I am lucky because my mother remembered some of the natural health approaches from her home country of Lithuania, a little country in Eastern Europe.  What I learned from Mom was way different than what I learned in school.

I studied and got all these: Master's of Science degree in Kinesiology and Health Promotion, Natural Health Counselor, Integral Yoga Teacher, Stress Management Teacher, Personal Trainer, Group Fitness Instructor, and a few others.  

I studied a little Buddhism in Korea - never speaking - always meditating or moving slowly and  playing a special drum. 

They yelled at me when I was playing the drum sometimes. I didn't know what they were saying.  I don't think they were mad. But one lady seemed offended by the way I held the drumstick. Maybe she was just trying to help.

I combine eastern thought and western science to try and make sense of health challenges. 

Do you want to feel great right now?  

Here's something I learned in Korea.  Go to a place where you have a lot of room, and freedom of movement.

Stand up, keep your knees soft, and then just swing your arms, until you're sort of slapping yourself lightly.  Then begin to jump up and down just a little bit.  Remember to bend your knees.  Jump around a little for about 20 seconds.  Then smile as big as you can.

See, don't you feel great?  See you tomorrow!