Wasp attack

I went into the back yard to putter around and was stung by a wasp. Not being the smartest person in Kingston, I stayed in the yard. Then I got stung a second time and got mad. After looking around for a while I found the nest under my deck. I made a quick trip to the hardware store and bought a giant can of wasp and hornet killer. There's going to be a wasp blood bath later today. hahahaha

Fortunately both bites were on the same leg, so I only have one gimpy leg, not two. My ankle looks kind of cool - it is about double the size it usually is. Doesn't hurt, though, which is good.

Nutrition

There have been some great comments posted this week about nutrition and weight loss during PT. I'm thrilled to see chrisrawk join me in my fitness endeavor and Eric has provided a great suggestion for eating well without depriving yourself. It's much easier to stay motivated when you have a fitness buddy to train with, so I'll send you a big "high five" Chris and good luck with your workouts.

You asked a good question about weight loss. The general rule is that if you want to lose weight then your calorie output must be higher than your calorie intake. It's "simple" math, although there is nothing simple about it. Basically it just takes a lot of determination.

You'll have to decide what works with your lifestyle, but I can tell you a little bit about what works for me.

The method that has worked best for me over the years is to start by concentrating on exercise and work on eating habits later. The reason this works for me is because I am much more motivated when I feel good about what I am doing. Generally exercise makes me feel good, and depriving myself of my favorite foods makes me feel grouchy and depressed. Dieting has never worked for me and I don't even bother to try it these days.

The exercise will burn calories and it will speed up your metabolism. By building muscle and by speeding up your metabolism you will find it easier to maintain a healthy weight (as well as a great beach body).

Keep up your fitness routine and when you have gotten over the hard part (muscle soreness, putting aside distractions and making exercise a priority in your day) you will start to look forward to the workouts. At this point, your body will start telling you what it wants you to eat. Your body will tell you to drink more clear fluids, it will tell you to cut down on caffein, it will tell you not to feed it high fat foods. This sounds crazy, but I find that when I am serious about exercising my eating habits change without much effort.

It's also a good idea to make changes slowly so that you don't feel deprived. It is easy to make small changes such as fixing your coffee with only one spoon of sugar instead of two, making your sandwich with butter on one piece of bread instead of both, using less salt, etc.

The timing of your meals can set you up for success, as well. By taking in a lot of food early in the day you will be less likely to get the munchies at night. I like to eat two little breakfasts and a good sized lunch which helps me resist the urge to nibble all night on treats.

Making your early meals more robust also helps. Having soup with your lunch will help give you a nice "full" feeling without taking in too many calories. Spicing up the flavour of foods also helps you feel more satisfied. Some healthy ways to do this are to add some tasty salsa or tangy cheese to your meals to fire them up a bit.

Please let me know what is working for you and maybe I'll pick up some ideas that I can use.

Running

The half marathon clinic is going well. We are starting hill training this week which should be a challenge. My run team at work is also coming along. We have people coming and going because of summer vacations but I think that we will have 6-8 hard core half marathoners. There may be some others too but right now they are busy with other activities and I'll have to wait and see if they are going to continue with the training.

I feel really good about the improvement that I've seen in my own running and I'm also enjoying being outdoors every day. At the end of the day, feeling good is the whole point of living an active life so here's hoping that I can keep the momentum going.

The blog experience

I was asked a question about the blogging experience. I've really enjoyed it and would recommend it to you if you want to share your moving experience.

Posting messages on the blog was easier for me than sending out individual emails to family and friends. I had limited bandwidth so sending photos by email was painful and slow but posting the photos to the blog made it easier to share them. The blog also kept a historical record of my posts that I could look back on from time to time. This is a lot harder to do through email.

Blog sites are free to set up, unless you would like some special features. Once you set it up I recommend limiting who has access. What I did was I controlled who could leave comments on the site by enabling the feature "moderate comments". You can also limit who can view your blog and this might be a good idea if you are posting a lot of personal information that you don't want strangers to have access to. If you do this, please add me as a guest so I can see your blog.

If you want to make money off your blog, send me a private email and I'll send you some links and resources that you can use to get started. I have decided not to do that for my blog, but there are lots of people who have turned their writing into a business. It sounds like a great idea - have fun with your writing and get paid for it. I like the getting paid part, just not the obligation to create original content regularly to attract readers. Something to think about for you writers, though.

Hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions and I'll try to answer them.

Happy blogging.

The Beer Runners

I finally chose a half marathon to enter this fall. I have been attending the clinic at the running room, but hadn't decided which race I really wanted to do. Now the decision is made.

I have entered the ArmyRun half marathon which is being held in Ottawa on 21 Sept. I entered as an individual, but today I managed to find enough friends at work who were interested in it that we are going to form a team. Our team name is "CFJSR Beer Runners".

I think it is quite catchy and is very logical since there is no real reason to run unless there is beer at the end of the race. lol

Only 72 training days left. If you would like to check out the website go to www.armyrun.ca.

BB

Smog alert

Today we had our first smog alert of the summer. It was hugely hot with lots of humidity. It sure would be nice to have some ocean breezes right about now, unfortunately the ocean is too far away to do any good.

The bank is no longer my enemy

The transfer process that I wrote about yesterday seems to have been resolved. More to follow.

Internet banking

I just called my bank to ask about transferring money.

The agent who answered the phone told me that there would be lower fees if I made the transfer by internet instead of using telephone banking. This sounded good to me so I logged onto the internet banking system and tried to make the transfer. After entering all the required information I hit the "transfer" button but the transaction did not go through and I received an error message. The message said that the debit function wasn't active and I had to call an agent.

I telephoned the bank again and explained the problem.

The agent said that the account was inactive so the internet functions were disabled. She offered to reactivate them for me and said the services would be available in 24 hours.

Technically, the first customer service agent was correct. My internet banking fees were very low - actually they were zero. Not having services means that no fees were charged. Hmmm