I have a new hobby….

Was on vacation last week, hanging out with the kids in the mountains, learning new things and just relaxing. While out there, I discovered something that I thoroughly enjoyed. I was introduced to Archery.

I had always wanted to give it a try and once I did, I am now hooked. And for my BD, I got my very own compound bow with a case and all the paraphernalia. After day 2 of practicing at the outdoor range last week, I discovered shoulder muscles I didn’t know I had. After practice #5 this week at an indoor range here in my city, those muscles are super sore now. Left bicep is sore from holding bow, right shoulder is sore from drawing the bow. Going to have to exercise my right bicep and left shoulder with weights to balance things out

Dis is me during my very first time with my new bow (yes it is little) but I have short arms…. Had to get a guard for my left forearm as once you hit it with the bow strings, you will want to do everything in your power to avoid doing it again… it smarts big time. I’ve since learned to hold it right to avoid doing that in the first place.

I have a bunch more “stuff” on the bow now so it is heavier (as of yesterday) and this weekend Mr. Sandra has configured some targets at our place so we now have our own outdoor range. I’ve got to start all over again with setting up my bow but I can see lots of practice in my future.

I like it!

And now that vacation is over, I am going to try to post more often as I miss all of you. I’m not sure I have anything interesting to say right now so you will just get the “life” updates.

Weight wise I am maintaining right now but gearing up for a new “clean” phase starting on Monday. I’ve let a little of the bad stuff back into my life with vacations et al but come Monday for 4 weeks it’s going to be 100% on track again. I like how I feel, how I sleep, and all that other good stuff. It’s worth the struggle in the beginning to stay on track.

Exercise wise – I need to get that increased for sure. With the clean eating, my inflammation in my hip goes down, therefore less pain, which means I am to walk more and sleep better. So now that I’m back into walking, I’ve got to add some strength training into the picture……

Have I mentioned my Grandmother is going to be 100 in a couple of weeks? Yes, 100 years old. She even has 3 other siblings so longevity runs in the family. My Aunt is worried she will live just as long… silly lady.

I hope you are all doing great and that you have a wonderful weekend!

ttyl

Sandra

Guest Post: The Sun and Vitamin D

By James E. Dowd, M.D. and Diane Stafford,
Authors of The Vitamin D Cure, Revised Edition

Most people mistakenly think that they get enough vitamin D from casual sun exposure or their diets. Unfortunately, this is not true. People in today's urban digital society rarely get enough sun exposure to fill their vitamin D requirement, and non-dietary sources must meet about 90 percent of your daily D needs.

The more melanin you have in your skin and the faster you tan, the more sunlight you need to convert pre-vitamin D to vitamin D you can use. The melanin in your skin acts as a natural sunscreen that blocks up to 90 percent of UV light. Dark African Americans need about seven times as much sunlight as fair-skinned European Americans to manufacture the necessary amount of vitamin D.

When equatorial dwellers immigrate to the United States, they move from overexposure at the equator, and their melanin, which once provided protection from the sun, now turns into a handicap in making vitamin D. This is a major reason for African Americans' higher incidence of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, gout, heart disease, systemic lupus, and cancer.

You may be thinking, I just need to take this book to my doctor and ask for a prescription to move to Florida or Southern California so I can get enough sunshine.

That's not the solution, and here's why: you have to live a lifestyle that lets you get outside to soak up sunlight. If your lifestyle doesn't allow that, you could live in Hawaii and be D deficient.

You won't see much difference in the D levels of people living in Florida and those from the northern United States, simply because culture, urbanization, and technology have lured all of us indoors and out of the sun during the last quarter century. Moreover, the smog in large metropolitan areas decreases D production, compared to rural areas at the same latitude.

The casual sunlight exposure of today's urban lifestyle isn't enough to produce adequate amounts of vitamin D, no matter what your latitude. That's why the Vitamin D Cure is essential!

The above is an excerpt from the book The Vitamin D Cure, Revised Edition by James E. Dowd, M.D. and Diane Stafford. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2012 James E. Dowd, M.D. and Diane Stafford, authors of The Vitamin D Cure, Revised Edition

Authors Bios
James E. Dowd, M.D., co-author of The Vitamin D Cure, Revised Edition, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at Michigan State University and the founder and director of both the Arthritis Institute of Michigan and the Michigan Arthritis Research Center.

Diane Stafford, co-author of The Vitamin D Cure, Revised Edition, has published more than twelve books, including Migraines For Dummies and No More Panic Attacks.

For more information please visit http://www.drjamesdowd.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter

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If you are interesting in winning a copy of this book, please leave a comment and on September 12th a winner will be randomly selected and notified. It is open to all US/Canadian folks.

It’s been awhile….

I’ve been a slacker blogger lately. Downright missing in action kind of blogger.

What can I say – I’ve been busy. You know …. work, life, gardening, camping holidays… that kind of thing.

I started out the year of 2012 with a bang, fizzled for awhile there, then started back head first into the game in July. I’m slowly making permanent changes in my life that are slowly affecting my weight and my over-all well being.

These small changes are affecting different areas of my body. For one, by removing grains, dairy and for the most part other complex carbs, I have reduced the inflammation in my body and am experiencing a LOT LESS pain in my hip/back. And my sinuses have cleared up too.

Sleep has improved as well.

And because of those improvements, I can certainly tell when I go off the wagon. Which is very easy to do during the summer camping months.

I am Ms. Social butterfly after all

I’ve increased my walking as well (finally) and am really noticing less pain in my hips. If I could only get it stretched out to where it needs to be, then maybe one day I can ride a horse.

Have I ever mentioned my goal is to get back on a horse? Since we now live out in the country it would be so easy to get a couple and get back into riding. But I KNOW my back/hip will not tolerate longer than maybe 20 minutes sitting on the back of a horse.

We had a big BBQ in July, and had invited many friends from around the neighborhood (as well as family) and one of our friends rode his horse (and led another) to our place. Nothing like seeing someone riding onto your property on a horse. Anyway… I was going to get up on the horse, as that is why he brought them over, and there were 30 people watching me. I didn’t have the strength to lift myself up into the stirrup and had I gotten up there, I am unsure I could have swung my leg up and over to sit in the saddle. It was a bit embarrassing. But we talked afterwards and we are going to get me over to their place, where there won’t be 30 people watching me, use a step ladder, and get me on that horse.

Then I can ride around their place and see how I do.

It would be my perfect dream to ride out in the mountains with this couple.

So I’m working on it by getting moving, then I will get back into the strength training program. Got to get these legs strong again.

I’ve been busy gardening as we have had a unusually warm summer for a change. It’s been so nice….. Mr. Sandra built me two above ground garden boxes and they grew like crazy (however last Tuesday it got hit by hail pretty hard and some is damaged). But look what we did ….

We built the boxes in the garage in the spring, and I painted them. They were so heavy and well built that he dragged them to the garden spot with the BobCat (which I am proud to say I also know how to drive this thing and it does come in handy).

 

 

 

We filled the bottom with rocks, then put down a layer of landscaping cloth. Then poured in the dirt.

This year I planted yellow and green Zucchini, yellow and green beans, kohlrabi, carrots, peas,  red and spanish onions and beets.

 

 

 

 

The tomatoes and Brussel sprouts I started from seed in my basement in February. This picture shows them just kind of starting out. Today they are full of fruit and flowers.

 

 

 

My Kohlrabi and Brussel Sprouts got attacked by a moth and its larvae and the leaves are almost gone. I’m not sure how to battle that and need to do some research as I want to keep this as organic as I can.

 

 

Next year I want more boxes as I have more ideas on how to grow things. This year was the first with this type of gardening and I did learn a lot. Next year the dirt will be better as well as I will be adding in more compost etc.

I also painted a bunch of old tires laying around, and threw a bunch of wildflower seeds in there and it grew like crazy. Hailstorm knocked quite a bit of it down, but it sure looked good before that.

 

 

Same thing with this old planter barrel. Found it hidden in this bed of trees that had overgrown. I pulled it out, filled it with dirt and threw in some wild seeds. The plants you kind of see on each side of this barrel are my Thai pepper plants. They were in the house over the winter and were almost dead. I brought them outside and while we were gone the end of July, first week of August, they bloomed and I am going to have a TON of peppers on them. Last year they were inside and I had to pollinate them myself and got quite a few peppers, but now that nature has done its thing, I am going to get hundreds

I love living out in the country. I love the gardening and I still don’t mind the commute. I could retire and keep myself busy for sure. I’ve got more pictures to show you guys on what we have been up to but I think this post is long enough.

I have been reading some blogs when I have had the time, and I hope to spend more time catching up soon. Hope you are all doing well and enjoying your summer.

ttyl

Sandra

I am still around...

I apologize to those of you that follow me and are finding me lacking in interesting posts lately. Actually in posting at all, nevermind anything interesting.

Life is pretty busy right now.

I was in Las Vegas last week for a Microsoft conference - it was a whirlwind of sessions, with lots to learn and too tired at night to do much of anything other than walk around a bit.... and lose a little cash - man that place is noisy.

I tell ya, Las Vegas people are a different class of people from anywhere else I've seen. And lots of the young ladies there (even not so young ones), sure do leave nothing to the imagination.

It was really really hard to not get all out of sorts. I felt like a overweight country bumpkin compared to the majority of the ladies there. Well mostly at night, during they day, normal people were out and about.... well almost all were normal... there were still some pretty interesting people out during the day.

Anyway, I am on another 3 full day session this week learning about Microsoft's Lync 2010 and next week I fly out again only this time to Pittsburgh to work with a consultant to install Lync in our production environment. Week after that, I've got another session with Microsoft on our Clustering environment.
Last week of March, beginning of April was System Center Operations Management and Hyper-V (two weeks). As you can see, I have not had much time to actually get any work done - too busy analyzing our systems and getting the Microsoft A-OK mark on how we implemented it all.... Being in IT can be fun sometimes.... the learning oportunity for me has been fantastic.

On the weightloss front I have not done so well but I have not gained anything. I now have my treadmill and finally got it connected to the internet so am working on getting into the "habit" of getting on it first thing in the morning for a good workout. I started the week before I left for Vegas, and while in Vegas, I did a ton of walking. Unfortunately I forgot my Fitbit at home, but I know I did more than 10K steps a day.... guaranteed.

My hips and legs are aching so much from the bed in Vegas that even sleeping in my own pillow soft bed hurts right now. I've got to figure out how to fix this problem as it really disrupts my sleep. Walking a lot irritates me but after I get into stretching a lot again, it will ease off. It's one of those you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't scenario's.

Ah... my life if anything is always full of something....

I hope you are all doing well. I have been reading blogs when I get the chance, but just haven't had time to write much.

Take care everyone and have a FANTASTIC day!
ttyl
Sandra

Motivational….

The Coach (Thanks Dayne) posted this link today and I wanted to pass it forward.

I needed to see this today….maybe some of you will need it too.

Motivation for Success: Uncomfortable vs Exhaustion