When adding water is not a good idea...

I have spent the last week or so without my trusty Fitbit.  It was my own fault for assuming it was more waterproof than it was.  I took it swimming and it became unhappy.  My replacement model, one that is allowed to go swimming, should be here soon.

Being a little old-school anyway, I use a combination of old and new technology to track my activity.  I print my workout sheets and make notes with an actual pen.  But I found that I missed the small accountability of steps.  As I’ve said before, there is nothing magic about 10,000 steps per day, but it remains a useful guideline, especially if it is easy to see whether or not it has happened.

Whether or not we choose to use a fitness tracker, we can be healthy and fit people.  Do what works, which starts with doing things.  (If water is involved, we might want to check for tolerances!)

Monday Work Out: The whole thing!

This week, we are working the whole body.  Notice how much we involve our abdominals when we do compound exercises like lunge to curl, ball slams, and deadlifts.  We also use them to do brains, of course.  If we want to make sure to use them on the bench press and flies, we can do those exercises on the ball instead of the bench.  Keep in mind that when we add instability like that, we may want to choose slightly lighter weights.  Four rounds.

1 min cardio
lunge to curl	20
ball slams	20
bench press	20
deadlift	20
flies	20
brains	10

Friday Book Report: Clean House!

My older son, after the usual extreme messy phase around middle school, became a very tidy human being.  When he moved out, he left behind Alison Haynes’s book Clean House!.  I hope this was not a commentary on my personal housekeeping skills.

The book could be a useful gift for a kid moving out on his or her own who did not have regular chores, or even as a reference for a kid who did.  It covers the basics of household management in a readable style with many handy charts.  Better, it does all of this from a more ecologically sound perspective than some of us may have learned growing up.  There are even recipes for non-toxic cleaners of all sorts.

Our environment can make us healthier or it can make us sicker.  We can choose.  This book could be the tool some of us might need.