Social Workout

Almost There

Eat.Sweat.Blog. Day 29. Do It.

Two days left. Hopefully you're busting your ass on the treadmill as we type, or sprinting alongside the Hudson River, legs pumping, heart thumping, feathered hair blowing gently in the breeze. Or your guns are glistening in side crow pose and you're off coffee and sugar and dairy and gluten—basically, you're a lean, mean smoothie machine and no one and nothing will ever harm you again. And even if you're acting like a fat pig laying inert in your bed eating only white bread there is still time! We believe in you! Go for a walk, eat a leafy green, rejoice in a jumping jack! Honestly. You can do it.

...And the Oscar goes to: msh258, who, while struggling through a difficult stretch of life, responded to a text from sassletics82 who encouraged her to go to Crunch, which she did, and once there, did a 70 minute workout and left feeling much better. msh258 will be recieving a copy of Clean Plates N.Y.C., our favorite guide to conscientous eating in the big city. Rock on, dudes!

SW-e-AT

Food-Ex Pairing: Cauliflower Ears

What: Cauliflower

And: Ears

How: Slaw

And: Qi Gong or T'ai Chi

Why: Cruciferous

And: Orpheus

Dept. of Party Planning

Eat.Sweat.Blog. Victory Celebration Announced

Allow me to focus your mind on a future date: November 4th. Every challenge must have a party, and Eat.Sweat.Blog. will have our biggest, best party yet. We've done dive bars, and yoga studios. Now we plan to make the feats come to life. It'll be Disney-like, but that's all I can say. Save.The.Date.

When: November 4, 2009  6:30-9pm
Where: Equinox  17th Street @ 10th Ave

All are welcome! Eat.Sweat.Blog. challengers and friends living outside of New York, come visit! Regardless, not to worry: We'll be live-blogging the whole thing, at least until we've over-consumed non-alcoholic smoothies and can no longer type.

New York

Check In

Place the Oxygen Mask Over Your Own Mouth and Nose

Hello Eater.Sweater.Bloggers. (And hello to the rest of you too.) It's Friday, and perhaps some of your are crawling to the end of the week. Nothing like a hard week and a Thursday night in the city to break the back of your healthy living resolve. There have been casualties. Sometimes all you can do is hang on, scrape out a maintenance workout, say no to last whisky sour. This was me last night, doing emergency yoga at 10PM in my apartment, with iPhone timer set to 45 minutes, a friend's Can't-Be-Missed-Birthday to attend, and my mind screaming with unfinished Social Workout Dot Com business (more on that to come in following post....) And yet, as always, 20 minutes of sun salutations in, feeling my humanity come surging back. Realizing how much of a wreck I was, and how easily fixed. At times like this, the instructions from the flight attendant always come to mind: "Place the mask over your mouth and nose, and breath normally....If you are traveling with small children, secure your own mask first, and then help them with theirs." That always struck me. It seems selfish, but they must know from experience. If you can't breathe, you can't help. Similarly, if you can't think clearly, be patient, smile...you can't help.

Eight days left people! Eight days is forever. Just stringing together five days of exercise in a row can cause elation. Eight days of healthy eating and exercise can make you feel like you just got back from a month of surfing in Hawaii. But this won't just happen. It requires focus and planning. At Social Workout HQ, we've all still got a lot of feats to accomplis. We got out our pens and feat cards, and we stared at our calendars. If you need several week long feats to finish, it's now or never. The final surge begins today. Halloween looms. Reach for your oxgen mask.

Workout

Personal Training or TV?

My roommate is moving out much to my excitement.  I love my roommate but she is a packrat and it makes my place seem claustrophobic.  I can afford the apartment on my own and I am waiting til I can redecorate without her stuff.  That being said I don't have a lot of stuff.  So I have to go and buy new.  My first purchase was going to be a new flat panel tv.  The tv

Eat.Sweat.Blog.

Fitness Paegent, Day 19

Monday. Day 19. One thousand, two hundred and seventy-three workouts down. At least another thousand or so to go. Make some of those yours. Exercise, sleep, and good food still feel exactly as life-savingly good as they did last time you tried them. Struggling? Re-commit to blog and country. Plenty of sympathetic souls on this site who will hold you accountable, or push you along, or commiserate. To wit: Both Sassletica and Matty_G_Fresh are struggling through Bikram Yoga classes... CJ and oiwuc hit the bottle hard this past weekend, and are now recovering...  On the other hand, Shaynet and Htexan are eating very healthily... Nfolkert, princessmichelle and Brooke all tried out virtual reality Expresso Bikes yesterday (maybe that should be your thing?), while meggiep did thirty minutes on her sister's old school stationary bike. Good luck.

And now for today's prize. Give it up for Vonhottie, who turned her treadmill into a runway: "Your standard consistent motion should be a tippy-toe swiveling prance. I call this move "Pageant Pageant Pageant." Vonhots will receive her own free copy of Clean Plates N.Y.C.

SW-e-AT

Food-Ex Pairing: Spinach Calves

We dedicate today's food exercise pairing to Popeye, sailor of bulging, spinach-driven musculature. Eat your spinach, it's good for you. And work your calves, it's sexy.

On the former, our faves at WHFoods make the nutrient situation very clear: "Calorie for calorie...spinach with its delicate texture and jade green color provides more nutrients than any other food." Got that? Plus, it tastes good to everyone but difficult children. From thekitchn.com: "It's...tender, juicy, and endlessly useful in the kitchen. It's even seasonally versatile; it grows in colder months, but then when you can't find it fresh and local anymore, there is excellent frozen spinach to be had for soups and stir-fries." What's not to love? They outline five ways to eat the stuff, and I'll add a sixth: I totally dare anyone to just open a can of spinach and guzzle it raw, Popeye-style. 

Calves are among the most beautiful and stylish of muscles, totally practical, but graceful. Woman with great gams get to bustle happily in knee lenth skirts, and/or heels that flex things just enough. Men with nice calves wear shorts, or kilts, and go sockless. But how to get them, and promote a wonderful, healthy bounce in your step? Ballet class comes to mind, as do successive vertical leaps in an open field, or basketball. You could ask a friend to sit on your back while you toe presses, or you could channel this Eastern European sexpot and her comical, thinly veiled calf exercises. Or all of the above. Good luck. Stay safe. Send word.

Workout

Black Beans & Push Ups

I completed my 4th (I think) SW-e-AT challenge today. Had a black bean burrito for dinner and did some push ups while at the gym. I had to wait until the guy next to me on the mat left--he was all hardcore and I still get intimidated at the gym.

The details:
33 mins elliptical
10 mins stretching & mat work

Workout

Final decaf day

Definitely excited to be back on caffeine tomorrow. Although it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I got a minor headache on the third day, but felt fine otherwise. I think the hardest thing was giving up variety. I'll ne glad to drink milk and juice again too.

As for the workout, went tonight right after work. Here's the breakdown:

15 mins wave machine
33 mins elliptical

SW-e-AT

Food-Ex Pairing Columbus Day Edition: Visionary Kale

Happy semi-holiday, and apologies for our belated SW-e-AT posting this morning. Normal operating hours jumbled with holiday, but not so jumbled there isn't kale to eat and your EYES to exercise! 

As usual, our dear friends at thekitchn.com have duly prepared a summary of Five Ways to Eat Kale: "Kale is not sexy; it's not the artichoke or leek of the vegetable world," they write. BUT, "Kale is one of our all-time favorite vegetables...packed full of goodness." Amen.

Yes, eyes and exercise.... Long ago, while staying in a friends apartment in a foreign city, I found a small book on the shelf of the guest bedroom. It was an extraordinary story or a man who had fixed is own poor vision by exercising his eyes. Don't be fooled by the eye doctors who simply want to increase your prescritpion, he beseeched. I didn't know what to make if it, and I've never verified the science, but I found his arguments compelling. Lo and behold, a search or two on the Internets reveals more than one web site dedicated to the exercising of the eye. We leave it to your discretion....

Today is Columbus day. A day to celebrate visionaries and telescopes. Eat your kale and look sharp.