Moving Slowly

I have been awake since 1am…and not in a good way….if there is a good way to be awake at 1am when you should be sleeping.  I’m pretty sure that someone took my pillow and used it to wipe up pollen last night because at 1am I was awoken with enraged allergies.  My eyes were itched shut and I was sneezing and wheezing, the whole nine yards.  So unpleasant!

 

Last night’s allergy attack might have something to do with the hour that we spent walking last night.  I had read somewhere (I think in Robb Wolf’s book; Paleo Solution) that if you abide by our genes and how we lived thousands of years ago, we aren’t built for long, hard cardio.  In our hunter/gatherer lives we would walk long distances, run short distances sporadically (running from predators or chasing dinner) and we would lift heavy things (logs, boulders).  So the idea is to move more frequently at a slower pace and lift heavy things. 

 

In the last two months Ray has lost around 20 pounds (just from being grain free on evenings and part of the weekends), he has about 25 more to go and he’s starting to get his desire to be active back.  He sustained a very major back injury almost two years ago and he only really recovered from it about 5 months ago.  He’s also going to be 54 years old this year and that combination took a huge toll on his fitness.  Fortunately it’s all coming back and he’s embracing “move more frequently at a slower pace” at the moment.  He also has a gym membership that he pays monthly for but never uses and I think for an Easter gift I’m going to buy him New Rules of Lifting (the men’s edition).  He loves lifting weights and wants to go to the gym but I don’t really think he knows what to do when he gets there to see results at this stage of the game.

 

So Ray gets some benefits, what about me?  I’m not sure.  I’ve always been a cardio junkie and it’s only in the last couple of months (since grain free) that I haven’t wanted to do that.  The walking on the other hand, I’m really enjoying.  We don’t go overly quickly and Ray takes it as a challenge to get us as far away from home as we want to go and then getting us back without ever crossing over where we’ve already been.  He’s lived here his whole 54 years so he knows every back alley and side street around us.  I, on the other hand, just follow along like a sheep, never really knowing where we are.  (Our turnaround point last night was a great surprise, Como Lake, a little puddle of a lake you wouldn’t expect in the middle of a residential neighborhood.)  I also notice during our walks that I’m engaging different muscles than I do when I jog and that my back aches a little which means that my core is not as solid as I would have liked to believe.  

 

We've logged 11km of walking in the past two days!

 

Anyway, I’m trying to adopt the “move more frequently at a slower pace” theory in both exercise and in my regular life.  It’s one of those things that I’ve discovered by listening to what my body wants and needs rather than trying to force a preconceived notion on it.  It’s a little scary though, trying these new things and trusting that my body will tell me what it wants and needs to be the most healthy.  It’s hard to toss out all the Conventional Wisdom that has long preached hard cardio for weight loss, that weight lifting is for men and that we should all eat a balanced diet of whole grains as the base. 

 

Last night we had our seafood medley and it was delicious.  I roasted some baby zucchini open-faced drizzled with olive oil and then coarsely chopped it and put my seafood mix over that instead of pasta.  Topped with butter and a dusting of garlic powder, it was great, the zucchini was a nice mild flavour so it didn’t overpower the seafood.  Tonight is a TV night at our house, Ray is having leftover seafood medley and pasta and I’m having Sweet Basil Pesto Chicken & Turkey Sausages from Trader Joe; probably with some mashed cauliflower. 

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