It’s amazing that when I stack wood my blood sugar drops to a point where anyone would be tickled pink to have it there.   After stacking wood I have no obvious signs of diabetes by looking at my blood results. So why doesn’t regular exercise do the same thing? It should, but for me it doesn’t.

When stacking wood I don’t exert myself as much as I do when I work out at the gym, so why is wood stacking so much better for me healthwise? I don’t know.

I’ve thought of hiring myself out to stack wood but I don’t really have that much time when I’m not working or cooking or cleaning or sleeping. I’ve thought of several things that I do when I stack wood that I don’t normally do when I work out.

1. I bend over a lot
2. I carry something heavy for a few steps
3. Sometimes I have to lift the wood higher than my chest
4. Rinse and repeat

So now I’m going to go to the gym and see if I can replicate my results by picking up a 5 lb weight and walking a few steps and putting it down.  I’ll look stupid but I think it’s worth it to figure out why one activity that SHOULD equal the other in benefits, doesn’t.

Yes, it’s Autumn in New Zealand and my job of stacking firewood has begun. It’s amazing though, last year when I stacked the wood my blood sugar would drop to lower than the average “normal” range every time I would work for more than 15 minutes. So it was with eager anticipation that I watched the truck drop 6 cubic metres of firewood last Saturday.

I tool my blood sugar before going out to stack wood for the first time. It was just a bit above normal. I stacked wood for about 30 minutes before deciding that my old back wasn’t as good as it was when I was 34. Sure enough, my blood sugar was in the “really good” range.

I’ve done exercise at the gym, I’ve gone speed walking and while both activities lowered my blood sugar, nothing has lowered it like stacking firewood. The old adage is that working with firewood heats you up twice. It certainly works for me.

Every afternoon I will stack for 30 minutes until it’s all neatly stacked waiting for us to burn it to keep us warm this winter. When living in the US everyone has central heating and cooling.. at least most everyone. Here in New Zealand most houses are kept warm by a wood heater in the lounge/living room and that’s it. It gets cold and living with nothing between us and the ocean, we get some pretty good winds where we are.

I’ve got a good start on the pile. It’s early days yet. I suspect it will take a week or so to get it all stacked neatly and covered. The house we’re renting here in New Zealand is now on the market. We’ve decided to move back to Australia and to that end we’re going back this week to look at some houses. Now that the big house has been sold we have a lot more options. We’re thinking of living near a beach for a while. We’ve enjoyed living on the water here in the Bay of Islands but our recent trip back to Australia has us hankering for a return.

Whenever I stack wood, I have my trusty pal Charlie to do the heavy onlooking and to check out all the new smells that have come to visit since he was last outside on the front of the house. He usually stays in the fenced area facing the ocean so he thinks it’s a real treat to check out the front of the house where the cats are permitted to go. Chasing Lucy up a tree is apparently great fun. Not so much fun for Lucy I think.

We work in the room with the wood heater (and the kitchen) and when it’s bedtime one of us goes in first and turns on the electric blanket. It’s okay once you get used to it but it’s lots different from setting the thermostat and expecting all rooms to be the same temperature. If that’s what you’ve got – you’re spoiled! Come and help me stack wood!

Stacking wood is a really good exercise for me because the wood isn’t really heavy so it acts like lifting weights and bending over for every piece means that my body is getting a much better workout than sitting in my work chair facing the computer screen all day. I should think about offering to stack other people’s woodpile, don’t you think?

p.s. Shaggy Charlie gets clipped tomorrow… he’ll look like a brand new dog!

I told you that I’d started a yoga class trying to get more flexibility into these old bones and muscles and the first thing I did was to practice at home and I did it wrong and tore the cartilege off one of my ribs. I went back to class and told my instructor what I’d done and she said, “You didn’t do that stretch and THEN inhale, did you???”

Well, of course I did. If I’d done it properly all my cartilege would be in one piece.

The stretch I was doing was to put my arms out to the side, bend at the elbows and try to make my shoulderblades touch each other. I have learned that you inhale and then as you exhale you do the stretch.

I didn’t know you could tear cartilege off a rib but it’s a common rugby injury and takes 4 to 6 weeks to heal. I must be a super healer because it’s not been that long and I’m just fine. Back to yoga class this week.

I’m off to Australia today to get everything in our house packed up and put in storage. We’ve got a company showing up on the 13th to start packing and the 16th is when they’ll move everything. I’m really dreading all the work that it will be to go through all the things we’ve accumulated over the past 13 years and decide what must be kept and what should go into the skip to be tossed out. We’ll only be gone a week but it will be full-on while we’re there.

Everyone knows that taking or keeping weight off is not easy. If it were easy, we’d all be thin. We’re used to our McSized or restaurant sized portions. Often I think some people feel they aren’t getting enough nutrition if they eat smaller portions. Honestly, just a few blueberries will give you the nutrients your body can use and you’ll store fat or poo the rest. Meat portions should be about the size of your palm (without the fingers). More than that and you’re just packing on the pounds.

But, there’s a delicious but here – if you exercise and get your heart rate up for 20 minutes every other day, you can eat more. Regular exercise seems to teach your body to burn fuel more efficiently by boosting your metabolism. Want to lose weight? Small portions and exercise.

I’ve also started yoga to help with my balance. I’ve always had less than perfect feet and as I get older I notice I’m not as sure-footed as I once was. I’m giving yoga a try to help feel more stable. My yoga teacher is phenomenal. The poses she can do on one foot bring tears to my eyes. I can stand on one foot as long as I’m holding on to a chair or the wall. No way could I stand on one foot without looking like a Weeble who could fall over.

Doing different kinds of exercise during the week seems to help with boredom and motivation.  I get to see my friends at yoga class.  I get to spend time with Charlie the Wonder Dog when we take long walks.  I see a different set of friends at the gym.  None of it is easy and there are days when my get up and go got up and went.  I want to reach my goal weight so no more procrastinating.   Reaching my goal weight in 2010 is what I want more than anything.  I know I’ll feel better and look better.

Getting a lapband put on really WAS the best thing I’ve done for myself ever.

It’s a good thing I saw the doctor about the pulled muscle because I needed to be fit for my new hobby. It’s not really MY hobby but I have to be a part of it. Charlie Brown the wonder dog has started agility classes and he needs someone to run along beside him and yell “Tunnel!” “Weave, Charlie!” and “Over!” as he runs through his paces.

We’ve only been to a few classes but he’s doing really well. Really well until today that is. Ever see a dog that you know is really well trained and he turns up to school so full of dumb you could swat him? No, I’d never swat my best friend but all the other kids in school were doing their bit like the well trained dogs that they are. Even Angel the dog that runs off every time her owner takes the leash off. MY genius stopped in the middle of a run because there was a new smell in the grass. Then he decided that maybe after going through the tunnel he could go and have a drink. Then he thought visiting Ted would be a good thing instead of going over the A-frame.

“Charlie, GO GO GO,” I yelled. Nothing doing.

He might as well have looked at me and said, “When I have this smell investigated, the water drunk and my friend visited I will attend to your wishes.”

Charlie is half King Charles Cavalier Spaniel and half Poodle. The other dogs in school are cattle type working dogs. It’s amazing to see the dogs anticipate their next obstacle. Today we learned the collapsed tunnel. Charlie was a star in this one! I was quite proud of him because the other dogs had trouble going into a closed tunnel. I didn’t say a word when Charlie dashed through and wanted to do it again. I didn’t admit that he does it every night when he goes under the covers!

So we left training with a bit of self respect. He’s on the floor now sound asleep but I can tell he’s dreaming about what he did in school because every once in a while his tail wags and he makes little tiny barking noises.

Starting next week, Charlie’s going to learn Flygility. Here’s a video of Charlie’s friend Ted competing in flygility. Ted’s mom Rebecca is training Charlie and I so it’s no wonder he’s pretty good. As I was previewing this video Charlie woke up and wondered where his teacher was because he could hear “GO GO GO!”

In Flygility, two dogs do a timed race going over jumps and through tunnels or through tires and they get to a flybox where the dog steps on a trigger board and a ball shoots out and he has to catch it and then take the ball back to his handler. The new box cost $145 and we get it next week.

When he can do it we’ll put up a video of Charlie my wonder dog.

My last post sounded all gloom and doom, didn’t it? Sorry about that but sometimes you just have to vent when you realize that you’ve made poor choices for yourself.

The good news is that I’m slowly, ever so slowly, turning my life around. I’m in a happier head space. I’m still working too many hours but I have started going to the gym with some friends and I started a yoga class. Nobody would ever use my photo in any yoga pose but after a few classes I don’t feel so much like a broken pretzle.

The eating is getting better too. I’ve started not filling my plate and telling myself I wouldn’t eat it all. How stupid was that in the first place? If I know I don’t want to eat much at any meal, putting extra on my plate so I could prove I wasn’t eating so much is total wackiness.

My plan is to increase the exercise time, stay with the yoga and make time to meditate every morning. I need time to be still with my thoughts. Fingers crossed!

As you know, I’ve been walking with my local diet group (a bunch of oldies like me who need to get fit) and this week we all bought fancy pedometers from the local physiotherapy clinic.  It’s very cute and sits on my waistband.  That’s really ALL it does.  I opened the pamphlet that comes with it and I can understand that I’m supposed to draw a line on the floor, place my right toe up against the line and walk 10 paces and draw a line in front of my left toe.  Then I measure the distance and divide by 10.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?  It’s easy until you start pressing those little buttons.  Why don’t they have a button that says “set”?  I’ve got reset and mode.  I don’t want to mode the darned thing, I want to set my details in there.

I used it yesterday, without setting it, and I walked just under 2000 steps in 20 minutes.  Of course I don’t know how far that was because I was using the setting the pedometer arrived with.  It’s ok, I understand that some people are geekier than others.  It took me forever to learn how to record a program to disk too.

Tomorrow the group meets and there’s a big contest for the person who’s put the most mileage on the pedometer.  I’m wondering if I can trick the pedometer to think I’ve walked more than I have.  I don’t want to win the contest; I just don’t want to be last.  That makes me a very small person in a really big body, doesn’t it?

Most of you know that I’m currently living in New Zealand but I’m also an American.  I’m visiting my mother and sister in Rhinebeck, New York and have had the best time walking through the falling leaves along the Hudson River.  I haven’t done this in YEARS!

I needed to exercise a lot because we also went to lunch at the Culinary Institute of America and my god.. what a place!!  Everything tasted so good – even ordinary things were cooked to perfection.  It wouldn’t do for me to live near here, that’s for sure!  I’d be walking by the river morning, noon and night!

Then to make up for eating at the Apple Pie Cafe at CIA, we went to Ferncliff Forest and climbed the observation tower.  I was exhausted by the time I reached the top.  I didn’t know they could make so many stairs and make them so steep!  The view over the fall foliage and the river was nothing short of spectacular.

I’m staying with my sister but I’m in New York to see my elderly mother who’s close to falling off the reality wagon.  At first she refused to see any of us but now she’ll see only me.  I guess because I’m from so far away, there’s the risk that she’ll die before I get back to the states.

I got tired of waiting for the rain to stop here in New Zealand so I could start walking again.  We live in a part of the country called the Bay of Islands.  It’s semi-tropical and I love having bananas, oranges, grapefruit, mandarins and avocados growing in the back yard.  Well, I did love it until I counted up the days that it has rained – it’s been nearly 12 weeks since we’ve had a day without rain.  The ground squooshes when we walk across the grass.

So I dragged out the treadmill and cleaned it all up.  It works fine.  It’s an American 110 volt model so I had to look for a converter and found that too.  It’s been a while since I’ve done much strenuous work.  I’ve been ill for so long that I’ve pampered myself way more than I probably should have.  I felt like shit and did everything to make myself feel better.  Exercising would have made me worse, I’m sure. (seriously..   well, that’s my story and I’m stickin to it anyway)

I cranked her up and started walking and it felt really good.  I was going at a pretty good clip and then decided to dry the “automatic incline”.  Dumb move.  By the time I finished my legs were aching and I was huffing and puffing.  I read somewhere that good exercise can do that to you but geez..  I was plumb tuckered out.  Not only that..  I only climbed imaginary hills for 10 minutes!

Today I will strive for 15 minutes.

The thing about starting a new exercise regime is that when you start building muscle, you gain weight.  Your muscles weigh more than your fat does.  Maybe I won’t weigh for the first week.  I’ll trick myself into thinking I’m losing a lot of weight even though the scales would call me a liar.

If you have a gastric band to lose weight, it’s only 1/3 of the battle.  You’ve got to exercise and you’ve also got to clear those emotional eating demons from your head.  Now I’ve got 2 out of three taken care of.  I’ll think about emotional eating on another day.

With my lapband in place and working nicely, I’m still losing weight.  Certainly not as fast as before since I have this dodgy gall bladder that has to come out whenever my name hits the top of the surgical waiting list.

Since I started my journey last November I’ve lost nearly 60 pounds.  Not quite.  I want to lose about 30 more pounds or maybe 20.  I’ll know when I look in the mirror and think, “geez, you look like a prune,” then I’ll stop.

I know, everyone tells me that if I don’t start exercising I’m going to have my skin dragging the floor.  I know this.  I can walk just fine – for hours.  I need to start lifting weights and stretching.  Consciously I know that without being told or having to read it somewhere.

My life is so busy and full, I don’t know where I’m going to find the 3 1/2 hours a day it’s going to take to do those freakin exercises!

“What?  Why does it take 3 1/2 hours when I only need 30 minutes of that a day?”

The actual exercise takes only 30 minutes, you’re right there.

It’s gonna take me 3 hours to talk myself into it every day!

Give me encouragement!