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Taking the stairs, all 31 flights Not long ago, I rushed into my office after a hectic morning commute only to find the usually empty lobby packed. Damn. I was already late. What was going on? The building manager, surrounded by...

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Adventures in arugula: Community Supported Agriculture This spring, I signed up for a community supported agriculture (CSA) program. In April, my boyfriend and paid up front for the program. Every week, we get a box of fresh, organic vegetables and eggs from...

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No-frills yoga: Donations for downward dogs When I was in high school, I was curious about yoga, so I walked to my town's library thinking I could find some books that would tell me how to bend myself into a pretzel. There was one book about Hatha...

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Bay to Breakers Before the sun came up this morning, I squeezed my half-asleep butt into spandex and a rain jacket and headed out for run. I ignored the rain, and when the wind started picking up, I just pretended I was...

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Unhappy meals The nanny state is at it again. This time, they're taking the fun out of getting fat by suggesting that fast food restaurants shouldn't be allowed to put toys in unhealthy meals. In an effort to lower...

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Taking the stairs, all 31 flights

Category : Fitness

Not long ago, I rushed into my office after a hectic morning commute only to find the usually empty lobby packed.

Damn. I was already late. What was going on?

The building manager, surrounded by a crowd of anxious cubicle dwellers, was saying something about the elevators not working properly and only going to the 17th floor. I work on the 31st floor.

I took a quick glance at the long line of workers fruitlessly waiting for elevators and decided to try the stairs. Normally, I don’t take the stairs, but I had just ran a 13k. When I played sports, I tackled big, rugby-playing girls and skated through packs of people trying to knock me over. I figured I could handle a few stairs.

A few poor souls were climbing the stairs like me, trying to report for duty. People were tugging their rollerboard suitcases up the stairwell. Ladies in high heels and pantyhose were clutching the railings for support.  Around the seventh floor, people started taking refuge in the corridors, gasping for breath.

As I climbed higher, fewer folks were taking the stairs. One fellow climbed the whole way to the 31st floor with me (my building is so large I don’t even know everyone who works on my floor). The climb only took about 15 minutes – we didn’t stop for air – but we were sweating by the time we reached the top. We high-fived each other when we reached our floor, like two soldiers who don’t know each other but have just survived a battle together.

Now, after months of distance running and weight lifting and thinking I was in pretty good shape, all it took was one staircase to cut me down to size. This was real-life fitness — a test of whether I could depend on my own body to get where I needed to go. And I was surprised to find that just climbing the stairs to the desk I sit at every day was difficult.

We’re always using wheels or conveyor belts to move our bodies – cars, trains and buses, elevators, escalators, the people-movers at the airport. We forget our own bodies are built to move. But it takes maintenance that we don’t always give ourselves.

After huffing and puffing up 31 flights, I decided to incorporate some stair training into my routine. I found a beautiful staircase in my neighborhood — San Francisco is famous for hills, after all — with a mosaic decorating the front of the stairs. As you climb higher, you move from tile patterns composing the ocean, complete with fish and clams, to the moon and sun. It’s challenging, but lovely. I also get a great view of the city when I reach the top.

One day, while I was climbing up and down the stairs, I saw an older man doing the same. But he was carrying a weighted backpack and lifting hand weights as he climbed. That’s a level of fitness I’d like to climb to.

Adventures in arugula: Community Supported Agriculture

Category : Food

This spring, I signed up for a community supported agriculture (CSA) program. In April, my boyfriend and paid up front for the program. Every week, we get a box of fresh, organic vegetables and eggs from a local farm delivered to our apartment.

Even Popeye would be intimidated.

The first week of the CSA arrived, and we got an e-mail from Petit Teton, a farm in Mendocino county, with a list of the week’s produce and some recipes. My mouth was watering already. I couldn’t wait to get the veggies.

Getting the first box of greens felt like Christmas morning. I tore open the box, pack with leafy, emerald vegetables. Chard, argula, bok choy, scallions, herbs.

Then the panic set in. What was I going to do with a pound of arugula? How do you cook Swiss chard? What about the veggies I couldn’t even identify?

Contunue Reading

No-frills yoga: Donations for downward dogs

Category : Fitness, Fitness culture, Money, San Francisco, Yoga

When I was in high school, I was curious about yoga, so I walked to my town’s library thinking I could find some books that would tell me how to bend myself into a pretzel. There was one book about Hatha yoga published in the 70s, complete with pictures of a flower-child in a unitard demonstrating cobra pose.

At that point, yoga was still seen as something Indians did for spiritual enlightenment and hippies did to get in touch with their energy…or something. But not long after, yoga became hot workout trend (I think Madonna had something to do with it.) Yoga moved from fringe-exercise to workout establishment. Now, there are $100 yoga pants and yoga-for-flat-abs workout DVDs and yoga studios on every corner. Bikram and Iyengar are household names.

Since yoga has become a hot commodity – and spawned famous instructors and more expensive yoga mats – more yogis and yoga studios are trying to take the practice back to it’s no-frills roots. More teachers and studios are offering  donation-based yoga classes and getting rid of rock star instructors, according to the New York Times’ recent “A Yoga Manifesto.” Instead, they’re holding massive classes in simple spaces, without the incense, soothing music or oms.

While I’ve never believed you need to spend a ton of money to get in shape, I’m happy to see so many people doing something active. I’m also glad that studios like Yoga to the People are making yoga accessible to people who don’t have hundreds to spend on classes.

With all the running I’ve been doing to train for Bay to Breakers, my muscles are getting tighter.  I need to stretch, but yoga classes can be expensive, and I’m cheap.

After work today, I walked to the Women’s Building, which houses a number of non profits that work to improve women’s lives, in San Francisco’s Mission district. Laughing Lotus, a yoga studio, is holding donation-based classes at the Women’s Building to benefit community programs the building supports.

I put my donation in a bell jar, and the instructor lent me a mat. I got to practice yoga for an hour, and other women in my community will get a little extra support. Now that’s what I call kharma.

Bay to Breakers

Category : Fitness culture, Motivation, Running, San Francisco

Before the sun came up this morning, I squeezed my half-asleep butt into spandex and a rain jacket and headed out for run. I ignored the rain, and when the wind started picking up, I just pretended I was an Olympic athlete training in a wind tunnel.

Why would I do this, given the well-known facts that I hate getting up early and love my bed?

A few months ago, my boyfriend asked the question I’d been dreading: Would I run

I'll be running here, May 16.

I'll be running here, May 16.

the Bay to Breakers race with him this year?

Last year, he ran Bay to Breakers on his own. I had just left my job in the middle of a recession to move to San Francisco, and my stress levels were high. I wasn’t sleeping. I had just gone through months of intense training with my roller derby league to prepare for a bout. The combination of stress, insomnia and intense derby training had taken a toll on my body – I actually lost weight, something that’s hard for me to do. I decided not to run. I wasn’t ready.

When he asked this year, I had no excuses. I’m working again and my life has stabilized, somewhat. I had to say yes.

Don’t get me wrong, Bay to Breakers is meant to be a fun event. It involves thousands of people, many of whom are drunk and dressed in costume, if they’re dressed at all. My father, a longtime runner, describes it as the race “when people act silly.” Only San Francisco could turn a Puritan activity like running into debauchery. This is my kind of athletic event.

Running scares me.

Running scares me.

The thought of running a race makes me nervous, though. The last time I did any serious running was when I was in college. Running tends to break my body – after a while, the repetitive motion cause my hips to become so tight even standing or laying on my side is painful. I’ve tried everything — letting an athletic trainer jab her thumb into my knot of a hip flexor repeatedly and call it a “massage,” hooking my hip up to a machine that transmitted low levels of electricity through little felt nodes at the physical therapist’s office, stretching — but nothing has stopped my hip flexors from tightening like vices. This time, I wanted to train right to avoid injuries.

I’ve never run a race as long as Bay to Breakers – a 12K. I don’t like the thought of running a slow time or not finishing a race. Hypocritical for a fitness blogger who preaches “Just go for it! Don’t worry about failing or looking stupid!” I have the same insecurities and fears as everyone else.

The race is in about three weeks. I’ve been running since February, gradually increasing my mileage. Two weeks ago, I ran 8 miles straight – the longest distance I’ve ever run continuously. This weekend, I’ll run 11 miles.

Last night, I was cruising around the Bay to Breakers official Web site and found a page where runners had submitted 99 reasons for running the race. I decided to change my own reason for running from “my boyfriend said I should.” My reason for running? I’m celebrating surviving my first year in San Francisco. I’m stronger, healthier, and more confident than I was a year ago. And I came the whole way from Boston to get here.

Unhappy meals

Category : Childhood obesity, Fast food, Food, Government, Health policy

The nanny state is at it again. This time, they’re taking the fun out of getting fat by suggesting that fast food restaurants shouldn’t be allowed to put toys in unhealthy meals.

In an effort to lower childhood obesity, Santa Clara County is dismantling the Happy Meal. Under the plan, you can get a toy, or you can get a tasty (but artery clogging) meal, but you can’t get both.

The Double X bloggers at Slate were having none of it. KJ Dell’Antonia invoked her libertarian roots: the government shouldn’t get involved in our personal lives, and besides, saying no is part of learning to eat healthy. Rachael Larimore ridiculed the government’s attempt to steer us toward choosing healthier food. What’s next – if we buy a video game at Target, will we have to buy two books to even the score?

Of course, we want the freedom to make the wrong choices sometimes. We don’t want the government telling us how what we can buy.

But left to our own devices, most Americans aren’t just occasionally indulging in a greasy burger or a beer. Almost fifty percent of American adults have diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol- health problems largely caused by our lifestyles.

As individuals, we want to be able to choose to eat cheeseburgers and smoke cigarettes. We also want Medicare to cover our bills after we get heart attacks in our 60s. In other words, we want the toy and the fries.

Is taking the toy out of a fast food meal going to help kids be healthier? I can’t say. But I can’t get blame the government for trying – they’re the ones who are usually footing the bill when our lifestyle “choices” make us sick.

No drinking, no smoking, no salting

Category : Food, Health policy, Research

The Institute of Medicine just released a report saying Americans are eating so much salt – more than twice the recommended amount – we’re seriously threatening our health. Too much salt leads to hypertension, or high blood pressure, which can lead to heart disease and strokes.

Don’t blame your salt shaker – that frozen lasagna in your freezer or your nightly

Chock full of...salt?

Chock full of...salt?

takeout is more likely to blame. Most of the salt we eat comes from packaged and restaurant food, the report says.

Here’s where salt gets political – the report recommended the FDA use its regulatory authority to mandate food manufacturers and restaurants to set maximum levels of salt in food.

As soon as the IOM urged us to put the salt down, the political backlash picked up. The government shouldn’t be telling us what to eat, critics complained. Fox News health editor Dr. Manny Alvarez complained the government is coming down people’s throats with mandates like these.  “No drinking, no smoking, no texting, no whatever…now no salting,” he complained.

At first regulating our salt intake seemed a bit silly –I enjoy the occasional bag of Cheetos myself.

But while I have the option of shopping for fresh food at a grocery store or farmer’s market, some Americans don’t – all they’ve got is the corner market or convenience store stocked with processed foods.

Eating less could prevent 100,000 deaths every year, the report says. But what’s the upside of eating too much salt? Salty foods taste good, and salt does have an important place in preserving packaged foods.

But the way food manufacturers use salt can be insidious. We expect certain foods, like peanuts or potato chips, to be salty. We don’t expect our jarred pasta sauce, boxed cookies, or even our chicken breasts to be pumped full of salt – but they usually are. Food manufacturers tend to load up processed foods with salt, sugar, and fat to mask the blandness of their products.

And when you eat in a restaurant, you probably have no idea how much salt is in your food.

If you want to cut down on salt, your best bet is to cook your own food – it’s the only way to regulate how much salt you’re getting. And if you’re cook for yourself, chances are you won’t need more than a teaspoon of salt to make your meal taste great.

Weight loss and your workout: The Not-so-skinny

Category : Fitness, Research, Weight loss

iStock_000001667800XSmallBad news, gym rats. According to some lab rats, exercise might not be as good for weight loss as you think.

The newest science on weight loss says working out won’t make you thin, but it may keep you thin, Gretchen Reynolds reports in the New York Times Sunday Magazine (it’s the Wellness issue - check it out).

If you’re already skeptical–or about to toss your collection of torturous Jillian Michaels DVDs–hold on. We know that weight loss comes down to a simple equation: calories in versus calories out. If you take in more calories than you use, you gain weight. When you use more calories than you take in, you lose weight.

My immediate reaction was that this research couldn’t possibly be true – since exercising burns (or subtracts) calories, exercising should lead to weight loss.
Exercise explains why Olympic athletes like Michael Phelps can consume massive quantities pasta and mayonnaise without gaining weight.

There are two reasons for this apparent inconsistency: most of us don’t exercise enough to make the scale budge (you would need to exercise for about an hour a day at moderate intensity, researchers say) and when we do exercise, we tend to eat more. Especially in women, exercise leads to a spike in a hormones (including one called ghrelin, which sounds suspiciously like gremlin) that make us want to eat more.

Your 24-hour Fitness membership may not be worthless. Working out has a few weight-loss benefits. According to some of the research Reynolds reported on regular exercise is the only constant among people who have lost weight and kept it off. Exercise may be beneficial for weight loss in another way.(And here’s where my favorite part, the lab rats, come in.) A group of University of Colorado scientists may a rats lose weight. Some of the rats maintained there svelte physiques with just diet, but others had to run on the treadmill for 30 minutes. After a while, the scientists took the rats off their diets and let them eat what they wanted. The rats who exercised didn’t gain as much weight back, because exercising changed the way their bodies metabolized food.

The bottom line? Exercise alone might not lead to weight loss, but it might help you maintain your weight. And it’s fun (just check out my post on Rainbow Skate.)

Get off the treadmill: Rainbow Skate is better than your workout

Category : Fitness culture, SF's best workouts, roller skating

Next time you find yourself at the gym slogging away on the treadmill, look around

skates

and ask yourself:

  • Is anyone wearing an afro wig, 70s booty shorts, or sequins?
  • Does the crowd go crazy when the DJ starts playing “What a Feelin’” from Flashdance?
  • For the price of admission, do you get a raffle ticket for the prize–which happens to be gay porn?
  • Is the fourth Wednesday of the month “Underwear night”?

If you couldn’t answer “Yes,” to any of these questions, then your workout is not as awesome as Rainbow Skate at Redwood City Roller Rink.

One of my friends says she can always find an excuse to skip the gym. I say, if her gym had guys wearing booty shorts doing triple-axles to “Xanadu,” she probably wouldn’t want to skip her workout.

Contunue Reading

Seven ways to get more veggies into your life

Category : Balancing Act, Food, Health policy, Money

Even if you don’t have a lot of time or money

Eat me.

Eat me.

You know that I’m passionate about eating veggies–I even entered a spinach eating contest once (although I don’t recommend doing this if you actually want to continue eating spinach afterwards).

You know you need to eat your veggies, but if you’re like most Americans, you’re probably not eating enough of them.

Maybe you’ve cut produce from your grocery list because it’s expensive. Maybe you don’t have access to a grocery store that sells fresh produce. Maybe you don’t think you have enough time to prepare veggies or you’ve never really liked how they taste.

But if you’re skimping on veggies, for whatever reason, you’re doing your body a huge disservice. Vegetables are low in fat and calories and are packed with antioxidants and vitamins.

Ok, the public service announcement portion of this post is over. Now, I’m going to give you some practical advice you can use to get more veggies in your life right now, no matter how busy and/or broke you are. (And, as always, I’d love to hear your suggestions about how you get vegetables into your diet.)

The good news: You don't have to do this to get your daily servings of veggies.

The good news: You don't have to do this to get your daily servings of veggies.

1.Pick veggies you like. If you don’t really like Swiss chard, but buy it because you think you should, it’s just going to wilt in your fridge.

2. Crudites are your friends. I always keep a bag of baby carrots in the fridge so I can quickly add veggies to any meal. Any vegetable that you like to eat cold will do–bell peppers, celery, cherry tomatoes. Add hummus for flavor and protein.

3. Cook tomatoes. Once I learned to cook tomatoes, I realized I had a vegetable base that I could add to pasta, omelets, fish, or just about anything. I just halve a bunch of grape or cherry tomatoes (or chop up some large tomatoes) and saute them with a little bit of olive oil, chopped garlic, salt and pepper. Sometimes I add mushrooms, onions or basil to the mix.

4. Roast veggies. Put a bunch of sliced veggies–I like to use asparagus, bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash–in a baking pan with a little olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper (does this sound familiar?) and roast them in the oven until they’re semi-soft. Then, I have a ton of veggies to serve as side dishes or put on sandwiches.

5. Take shortcuts where you can afford to. And don’t feel bad about it. Although the taste of frozen and canned veggies doesn’t even compare to fresh, these shortcuts are still nutritionally excellent options and can save you time and money. Canned or frozen veggies are also a good option if you don’t have access to fresh veggies.

I buy frozen broccoli florets and kale because I don’t like to spend time preparing them fresh, except for special meals or occasions. But I can easily throw frozen kale or broccoli into soups and pasta dishes to make them more nutritious.

6. See a pot of boiling water as an opportunity. To steam veggies, that is. Any time you cook something that requires boiling water, whether it’s mac’n cheese or rice, throw a steamer on top to cook veggies simultaneously. You can even use some frozen veggies, baby carrots or bagged spinach if you don’t have have time to prep fresh ones. Just add a little olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, or spices of your choice. This way, there’s no excuse not to eat veggies.

7. Mix veggies into the main dish. People who turn their nose up at a side salad or cooked carrots love my pasta primavera dishes. For these dishes, I mix in cooked veggies with pasta and other flavorful ingredients, like olives, garlic, canned marinated artichokes, tuna, broth or spices. You don’t have to make a fancy dish to do this–throwing cooked spinach, kale or broccoli into mac’n cheese has the same effect.