Changes Coming

Hmm, I noticed that Flickr has now changed the wording on their web site and automatically adds a copyright to anything I upload to the site. Many things I do upload to my page for use on my blog, like the Family Many photo in the post below, I do NOT hold the copyright to. When I try to just link graphics from another site, Blogger tells me that I must hold the copyright to the graphic, too. I'm going to have to figure out what to do for future posts. In the past, when everyone had their own web page on places like Geocities, the owner usually encouraged you to download the graphic to your own computer and not link to it, that it slows the loading rate on the web site, to just take it and upload it to your own site if you want to use it, so most of the graphics I have on this computer came from sites like those. Unless the owner embedded a copyright or did a watermark, I have no idea where they came from right now to give credit. I'll have to pay attention to other blogs now and see what they're doing.

In the meantime, I added the little not that the photo below is copyright Family Auto Mart 1999, because that's the year I got it from a local Orlando web site back then, maybe even the Family Auto Mart site itself. I have about a dozen of shots from that site, most publicity photos, others scans of free photos handed out to people, even postcards.

Long-Overdue Update

I have to take back what I wrote in the last post about never injuring myself with a Leslie Sansone video. About a week after I wrote that post I wound up first in the local emergency room, and when I *still* hadn't seen a doctor or even a nurse to take vital signs (who ignores a cardiac patient at 3am complaining of chest pains??) I wound up coming back home and at 9am phoning my doctor for an emergency appointment. As it turned out, those chest pains I had been having were a contused chest muscle and bruised ribs. The high blood pressure (200/100 again - YIKES!) I had early in the morning was just from worrying about it and was definitely NOT cardiac. Whew!

As I mentioned back in May, some of the exercises I was doing just weren't getting me into the target heart rate zone, so I started put more enthusiasm into my moves and for the videos that required hand weights, I increased from my 2 pound ones to the 5 pounders.

BIG MISTAKE!!

I have a history of easily pulled muscles and once dislocated my shoulder just by putting my arm on the back of the chair next to me. I dislocated it another time doing a Richard Simmons toning video. I've pulled muscles in my legs and arms many times just doing smooth and slow movements with very light hand weights of only a pound each. I should have known better than to use my son's 5 pound weights, but I was so frustrated at this lack of weight loss (Notice the ticker hasn't changed in months!) that I was willing to do anything to get it going again. I was already eating close to 1000 calories a day and I'm eating even less now and still I'm fluctuating the same 5 pounds up and down since April, and both doctors are as frustrated as I am.

When we lived in Florida back in 1999, one of the things I loved about being there were the TV commercials for local businesses. Here in urban NJ we get all the slick ads for NYC businesses and the occasional home-grown one for a local business, but those are few and far between. I never understood it when I would watch a B-movie where they mocked local tv commercials, since I had never seen any like those to compare them to. Well, the Greater Orlando area has loads of commercials for local businesses, all the same as those ones I saw in B-grade movies! The entire family fell in love with those from this one particular car deal, Family Auto Mart, featuring The Family Man and his Family Auto Mart (and personal) Family, including the Family Boy, his brother.

photo copyright Family Auto Mart 1999

The commercials can be found on YouTube and they have a great following there. This blog post from Tacky in Orlando tells it greater than I can. My son, to this day, still sings the jingle "Family Auto Mart, where the wheeling and dealing start. . ." and ". . . run a row of boo-coo mini-vans" is now part of our DNA. A friend of my dad's even bought a used car from them in the months just before we moved there and said yes, they're as crazy in person as they are in the commercials, but they do have excellent service and great deals.

Anyway, (now why the heck did I get off on this tangent? Oh, yeah! Now I remember!) one of my favorites was always when the Family Man and Family Boy would dress as hillbillies and since this song called "Fixin' to Learn Ya." Take a peek at it:



You would think after all these years with this back injury, and my childhood history of broken bones from my tomboy days of climbing the sides of buildings and falling off roller skates, that I would be more cautious when exercising. I guess I still hadn't learned yet.

So, after a gentle chastisement from my doc, we went on to speak of other things, like my echocardiogram results. The takotsubo is completely gone and my heart structure is back to normal. He was pleased with my eight pound weight loss. Huh? 8 pound loss? According to my scale at home - and I took my weight just before walking out the door, fully clothed and with shoes - I'm the exact same weight as I was my last visit to him in April. I asked if they had the scale adjusted since then, because the nurses told me when we were there with my husband's aunt and it showed that she had a 10 pound gain, even though the woman eats maybe one meal a week, that it was at least 6 to 8 pounds off. No, as far as he knew the scale hadn't been touched since my last visit. I have more blood work being drawn tomorrow for lipids, thyroid, and liver and I'll go see him again in early July for the results.

How will the results change my life? Well, if the triglycerides are sill up I may have to switch from a starch based food plan to a protein one, and add meat and dairy back into my daily diet. I could never go low-carb - I need those starches or my blood sugar plummets. I can't add too many fats in because my cholesterol counts weren't that great to begin with, although recent studies (past 20 years maybe?) are showing that the cholesterol levels in the body have more to do with genetics than what's ingested, for the liver makes most of the cholesterol. I like many of the vegan meals I make, but I like a cheeseburger even more, even if it's made from ground chicken. And a whole wheat pizza isn't far from my thoughts, either. I may switch over to a more South Beach type food plan, anyway, no matter what the labwork shows. Starving myself on 1000 calories of veggies and grains certainly isn't doing anything to help me lose weight, so I may as well go back to enjoying my food again. As long as I don't pig out with things like daily kielbasa or mystery meat hot dogs I should do just fine. I already had been living sugar-free and using whole grain flours for years before this heart thing and do plan on continuing with them for decades to come. So what if I'm still fat!

My Aching Knee

Ouch! After a few weeks of doing just my Leslie Sansone videos or walking on the treadmill, this morning I had a hankering to do Richard Simmons' Sweatin' to the Oldies, the original. I dream (Really! Can you imagine hearing and seeing that fuzzy-headed guy all night long? I do!) about doing this video now and then, and did again all weekend. I just HAD to do it today!

First of all, I never did get my heart rate up into the working zone, even during the fastest songs. But one thing that did happen, before I even got up to "Great Balls of Fire" and The Twist, was a pain in my left knee, in the back, behind the knee joint. Just lifting my leg would cause it to twinge. At that point I knew I wasn't even going to attempt to Twist and just modified the movements.

Tomorrow it's back to Leslie. I may not do my treadmill time today to give my knee a rest.

I've never injured myself doing any of the Walk at Home videos, but over the decades I have injured myself doing Richard's videos. I dislocated my shoulder while doing a toning video about 15 years ago; more than once I injured one or both knees; my lower back got twisted a few times. I guess it's time to put these videos aside and go back to doing what I've been doing with them - using them just for the music while using my exercise bike.

In other news:

Go to the Kelly Olexa blog and read this post. She sums up exactly what I've been whining to my husband and doctors about for a while now. I see I'm not the only one frustrated with all the conflicting information out there.

Quickie Update

Still following McDougall but in Rice Diet sized portions in my quest to get twenty pounds off between cardiologist appointments. Eating under 1000 calories of mainly vegetables and some oatmeal a day really isn't all that healthy, but my primary care doc said I can most likely treat this cardiologist visit as the last one, so if starving myself for a month will prevent another one of his tirades, so be it. My primary care doc was very satisfied with my weight loss when he saw me three weeks ago, even though it was only 7 pounds down in three months. He knows how hard it is for this sluggish body of mine to release even half a pound! To know that I've lost almost 45 pounds since last summer is miraculous!

After the appointment next week I'll go back to regular McDougall foods, mostly MWLP, in large enough amounts that I'm not constantly thinking and dreaming about food. If I regain some of those pounds, so be it, but starvation dieting to please a doctor is NOT a healthy way to live.

Michael Emerson on The Soup

I love this show, going all the way back to it's first host, Greg Kinnear, and especially the John Henson (Skunk Boy) years. Now this is a great clip!

Forks over Knives Trailer

"The feature film Forks Over Knives examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods."

Coming Summer 2010

My daily exercise for the past 2 weeks has consisted of a 2-mile Leslie Sansone video, 5 minutes using the MagneTrainer for upper body work, then again for a minimum of 30 minutes in my target heart range as a recumbent exercise bike. It's been a great work out, getting my heart rate up there and making me sweat prolifically.

Then the leg pains started. First it was just above my ankle, and I blamed the shoes, the boots I wore outside to view the aftermath of "snowmageddon", or just too tight socks. But after switching shoes and making sure I never took a step without them, doing better stretches, even changing the type of socks I wore, the pain is now not only in the ankle but in the shin of my left leg. Damn! When this happened to me in the past my podiatrist told me to cut back on those higher impact aerobics. He already told me to not do so many walking exercises because of my deformed and arthritic feet but I liked the way they made me feel afterwards, and face it, those Leslie Sansone workouts are just so simple to do that a klutz like me can follow along with ease.

But now I have to back off a bit or the pain and damage will only get worse.

Today, instead of any of that fast or foot-pounding stuff, I pulled out my Francesco and Daisy Garripoli beginners qigong DVD, and aside from tired feet from all that standing in one place, I think I got a very good workout, full of gentle movements but some just enough to get my heart rate up a bit — nowhere near my target heart rate but at least elevated. It was nice, returning to this not-so-old favorite. I just bought it a few months ago, before my heart thing, and stopped using it afterwards when the cardiologist insisted on me doing only cardio workouts, with weight loss as the main goal, even though the cardiac rehab nurses not only approved of me doing qigong but suggested I do the cardio one day and do the qigong on alternate days, that doing cardio 7 days a week really isn't healthy or sustainable, especially with my history of various arthritic spots, neuritis, and degenerative disk disease in my spine.

In the old days, I would have just not exercised until my left felt better. My, how times have changed!