(Healthy) Hearts in a Row--February Encouragement and Goals

[Wood_Duck]

Today is Feb. 1. It is time for a clean slate. Look back over January. What worked well for you? What changes would you like to make? What do you want to continue?

What strategies helped you make your goals? Anything you can share with the rest of us?

[NordicDuck]

January was my first month with rowing on the Concept2. I have rowed 4-5 times a week, usually with my husband, at a health studio not too far away from work/home. I would very much like to continue rowing at least 4 times a week.

The last few weeks I have spent much time on perfecting my technique (still having problems with my legs - I use my arms too much while my legs don't get enough work done). I have also used the erg for exercise, rowing somewhat farther every week. Last week I rowed my first 10k, this weekend I will row my first 60 mins.

Two times a week I have done intervals - 4 mins x 4 times with 3 mins pause - trying to reach my target pulse of 168-173.

My February resolutions are 1) to work on my technique, esp my legs, 2) continue doing interval training, 3) increase my capacity for longer sessions, and 4) row 4 times a week.

Grethe

[fleabane]

Mmm whats worked well - for me buying the C2 in the first place - having never rowed before it was a bit of a gamble but you guys over here helped make my mind up

So whats my aim this month:

1. Get someway towards 500k so I can reach it in March

2. Row as often as I can using RowPro and meeting others via the online rowing.

3. Get a training plan in place as I want to crack the 2k in under 8 mins and 7000m in 30 mins.

4. Spend time encouraging others - I have a lot to learn but its such great fun and very rewarding - as well as good for you - and not much of what I do has that benefit

5. Row at least 5 times per week - with 2 of those strapless - as suggested by Grams (really works by the way).

6. Shut up and let someone else speak!!

7. Finally!! - just to say thank you to all of you that have encouraged and helped me in my first few weeks really appreciated

Jean xx

[margaret]

Committing myself to rowing a million meters in 10 weeks forced me to make time for rowing (& my health) every day I possibly could. It also helped me get more fit and reach a healthy weight, plus the feeling of accomplishment that I succeeded. The negative side was that missing even one day meant extremely long rowing sessions to make it up and less attention to other areas of my life.

I want to continue to improve my fitness, but with shorter and diverse exercise sessions. Specifically, in February I commit to:

1) row new PBs in the 500m and 60 minute categories by rowing incrementally harder one or two days each week, never taking more than two consecutive days off from rowing so I don't regress,

2) return to strength training twice weekly (15-20 minutes each),

3) return to walking 3 days each week, 2-4 miles, jogging or racewalking intervals at least once a week, to prepare for a 5 or 10k fun run/walk at the end of March, and

4) take at break one day a week for relaxed fun activity.

More general health goal is to cut back on coffee.

[lzcait]

This will be my first full month to get to row on the erg. So here's my goals!

1. Row 3-4x a week:40-60 min. each
2. Work on technique...need to work on the "glide."
3. Try rowing strapless!
4. Spin class 2x a week
5. Continue weight training
6. Core work to strengthen abs

[MomofJBN]

1) <snip> never taking more than two consecutive days off from rowing so I don't regress,

Ditto. Taking 3 days off is deadly! It feels like you're back at Square One.

As in January, I will do 4 days/wk. This proved to be both realistic and enough to make fitness progress. If I happen to do a 5th day, that's just icing on top.

I don't have a specific goal in meters, but I'm trying to improve both the duration and speed of my rows (not necessarily at the same time ). I'll do a mixture of long steady ergs and shorter interval work.

My fear is that if I do a lot of speed work, I'll end up with massive thighs. I want to tone, but not build huge muscles, especially in the thighs. Any advice?

Continue to wean myself from 2 cans of Coke/day to 1. I'm at 2 one can days/wk now. I want to get up to 3 one can days/wk by the end of the month. (Margaret - is there a theme among the harried mothers here? )

[margaret]

My fear is that if I do a lot of speed work, I'll end up with massive thighs. I want to tone, but not build huge muscles, especially in the thighs. Any advice?

Continue to wean myself from 2 cans of Coke/day to 1. I'm at 2 one can days/wk now. I want to get up to 3 one can days/wk by the end of the month. (Margaret - is there a theme among the harried mothers here? Wink )

I don't think massive thighs will be a problem for you. That happens to cyclists (the frog leg bulge), but I haven't seen it among rowers. Said from personal experience and observations .

I rarely drank coffee til my last kid was weaned. It's not the caffeine I crave, just the indulgent ritual. Oh, well, there's inko and cafix and other almost-coffee options. About 5 years ago, I weaned myself from soda to coffee and tea...one step at a time!

[Wood_Duck]

January did not go as I hoped. I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the community by handling the computer work as captain for the team. It was very crucial for me to be involved. It helped me to not give up hope. I had wanted to lead in erging but an overnight change, in hindsight, was not a reasonable plan.

The good news is that by the end of the month, with help from my friends in the community, I made a major change in my eating habits which will definitely have a major healthy heart impact. I am confident that that will continue.

Make time to exercise—making it a Priority—is still a challenge to me. I did compete in a 2K and did better than I expected. However, I did not succeed at incorporating regular exercise. I did get closer to it at the end of the month by connecting with others on-line through rowpro. I guess it is the commitment to meet others to exercise that is helping me make exercising a priority.

I do still have the goal of rowing 4x a week. I am grateful for the encouragement (and accoutability). THANKS Everyone!!

[MomofJBN]

I should add another goal - I want to get to LWT for real, and not just for a day. That day was an exception and maybe a bit lucky. However, the general trend is still downwards. I'm definitely seeing results in how my clothes fit. Maybe even the first hints of ab muscles visible in the mirror.

Keep up the good work everybody!

[Keep on rowing!]

Great to see everyone's goals. I have been trying to come up with mine. I think I am there.

1) I need more variety on my non- row days. I am using weights 2x a week, but should throw in more Pilates/Yoga as well. 2) I want to start running more, so I will have to (gulp) cut back on my rowing some. Not enough hours in the day! I want to get to 1 million by my first year of rowing which is the end of this season. I am close, but have about 300,000 or so. 3) I would like to get rid of the "extra" 5-10 pounds I gained over the holiday's!

I may revise my goals based upon how it is going. I am happy with the goals I set in the JC, just want more results.

As far as the caffeine (coffee) goes, I am not ready to give that up! We all have something that we must indulge in. I used to drink alot of diet soda until I discovered coffee a few years back. I do drink diet once or twice a week. All that I am saying is if you enjoy it-go for it! You are probably in much better condition than alot of people. Just the fact you are exercising says alot.

Good luck everyone! If you set your mind to something-you can accomplish alot.

[DavidA]

... I did compete in a 2K and did better than I expected....

Susan,
I'm sorry I didn't get a photo of you, but I didn't know all the forum members that were there. Anne pointed you out to me after your race. Maybe next year.
Good luck with your goals.

David

[Nan]

Well, here goes for February:

1. I have committed to run a half-marathon in May. We will see if I am able to see this through. I am recovering from plantar fasciitis and have chronic ITB problems so I may have to back off on this one, but I truly miss running and am hopeful that I can get back to it if I take it slow. Most of my cardiovascular exercise will occur by following my training program for the half.

2. I will continue to row three times a week, and will try to focus on improving form and times, rather than worrying about distance.

3. I will "eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." This is the advice of Michael Pollan in an article, "Unhappy Meals," in the New York Times Magazine. I found his views on food, food science and the food industry to be the best I have read in a long while. He is the author of the Omnivore's Dilemma. The link to the article is five million characters long so I can't include it , but do try to find it by going to the NYTimes site. It is a good read.

By the way, it is finally winter here in Ottawa, despite the depressing news from Paris on global warming, and the world's longest skating rink (the Rideau Canal) is open for business. For now.

N.

[Ducatista]

3. I will "eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." This is the advice of Michael Pollan in an article, "Unhappy Meals," in the New York Times Magazine. I found his views on food, food science and the food industry to be the best I have read in a long while. He is the author of the Omnivore's Dilemma. The link to the article is five million characters long so I can't include it , but do try to find it by going to the NYTimes site. It is a good read.

The summary at the end of the article is pretty good:

How might we plot our escape from nutritionism and, in turn, from the deleterious effects of the modern diet? In theory nothing could be simpler — stop thinking and eating that way — but this is somewhat harder to do in practice, given the food environment we now inhabit and the loss of sharp cultural tools to guide us through it. Still, I do think escape is possible, to which end I can now revisit — and elaborate on, but just a little — the simple principles of healthy eating I proposed at the beginning of this essay, several thousand words ago. So try these few (flagrantly unscientific) rules of thumb, collected in the course of my nutritional odyssey, and see if they don’t at least point us in the right direction.

1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.

2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best. Don’t forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim that it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks. When Kellogg’s can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised. (The American Heart Association charges food makers for their endorsement.) Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.

3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.

4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market; you also won’t find food harvested long ago and far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality. Precisely the kind of food your great-great-grandmother would have recognized as food.

5. Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation. And those of us who can afford to eat well should. Paying more for food well grown in good soils — whether certified organic or not — will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown.

“Eat less” is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. “Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. Food abundance is a problem, but culture has helped here, too, by promoting the idea of moderation. Once one of the longest-lived people on earth, the Okinawans practiced a principle they called “Hara Hachi Bu”: eat until you are 80 percent full. To make the “eat less” message a bit more palatable, consider that quality may have a bearing on quantity: I don’t know about you, but the better the quality of the food I eat, the less of it I need to feel satisfied. All tomatoes are not created equal.

6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Scientists may disagree on what’s so good about plants — the antioxidants? Fiber? Omega-3s? — but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt. Also, by eating a plant-based diet, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods (except seeds) are typically less “energy dense” than the other things you might eat. Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores, but near vegetarians (“flexitarians”) are as healthy as vegetarians. Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he advised treating meat more as a flavoring than a food.

7. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren’t a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn’t still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others: Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats, as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and alcohol?!) so much as the dietary habits: small portions, no seconds or snacking, communal meals — and the serious pleasure taken in eating. (Worrying about diet can’t possibly be good for you.) Let culture be your guide, not science.

8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be cheap and easy; that food is fuel and not communion. The culture of the *** DELETE - SPAM ***, as embodied in those enduring traditions we call cuisines, contains more wisdom about diet and health than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism. Plus, the food you grow yourself contributes to your health long before you sit down to eat it. So you might want to think about putting down this article now and picking up a spatula or hoe.

9. Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases. That of course is an argument from nutritionism, but there is a better one, one that takes a broader view of “health.” Biodiversity in the diet means less monoculture in the fields. What does that have to do with your health? Everything. The vast monocultures that now feed us require tremendous amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to keep from collapsing. Diversifying those fields will mean fewer chemicals, healthier soils, healthier plants and animals and, in turn, healthier people. It’s all connected, which is another way of saying that your health isn’t bordered by your body and that what’s good for the soil is probably good for you, too.

[GMW]

Thanks for all the encouragement in Jan. I didn't get to 200K meters...my mom ended up hosptialized and I was out of town but was able to erg 2 of those days at a local health club after I left the hosptial. I was out of town several days this week doing a presentation...not only did I not erg, I didn't exercise at all for 3 days, so tomorrow will be a rude awakening...

I would like to get over 2 million meters in Feb...less than 200K away. I was going to cut back on rowing a bit during Feb. as I think I need a little more diversity in cardio exercise and I need to get back to how well I was doing in the beginning on January with abs and weights. However, I do want to finish the 2 million so I'm going to commit myself to doing the following:

1) Getting to 2 million meters
2) Lift weights 3 days per week
3) Abs 5-6 days a week
4) Add some variety in cardio exercise if only for a short period of time per day
5) Continue to eat well...I have really improved on this during the past year but the past few days have been a challenge...


Gail

[Wood_Duck]

VALENTINE'S DAY CHALLENGE February 9 - 14, 2007
* IF you row a total of 14,000 meters between 12:01 a.m. Friday, February 9th and midnight on Valentine's Day, Wednesday February 14, 2007,
* AND you enter it in your logbook,
* THEN you can download your choice of C2-designed Valentine's Day cards to send to your friends and loved ones!
(Note: Once you have logged in your 14,000th meter, you will need to log out of the Ranking and log back in to see the link to the special C2 Valentine's Day cards.)

The cards were unique. It was fun to finish the challenge just to look at them. Last year, several people signed up to row with an "other."

Susan