Walk A Mile With My Camera

Boredom is a big problem for me when it comes to exercising.  I hate walking on a treadmill, staring at the same spot on the wall.  Same goes for any machine in a gym; I just can't stay interested.  Even walking outside, repeating the same route over and over again can get old.  I need something to keep the routine from becoming routine.

I've always been a big of a photographer wannabe, but never really made a serious effort to learn the craft.  Over the past year or so, a combination of forces, primarily the need for a good camera to take photos for magazine articles, pushed me to buy my first "real" camera.  By "real", I mean something more than your typical point-and-shoot that you take on vacation.  As a precursor to a DSLR, I purchased a Samsung HZ50W, one of the new classification of "super-zoom" cameras.

As I said, the main reason for buying this was for magazine photos, but I quickly began exploring other uses.  I became hooked on the camera, taking it with me everywhere; everything I saw looked like a photo opportunity.  I became "that guy with the camera", ask my wife.

What's this have to do with health or this blog?  How many times have you been somewhere outside, on a walk or a hike, and saw something photo-worthy but didn't have a camera?  What if the purpose for being on the walk in the first place was to look for photo-worthy sights?  That's how I've started to view my walks.  Each walk is a photo walk, an expedition to look for new things to take pictures of.  An interesting shadow, a ray of sunlight calling attention to a leaf on the ground, a bird sitting on a tree branch.  I get so wrapped up in the hunt for a photo that I completely forget that I'm exercising.  It's amazing how quickly 3 or 4 miles go by.

I thought I'd share some of my favorite "walk" photos below.  If you want to see more, feel free to browse through my albums on Google+; I won't promise all of the pictures there are good, but some of them are great.  I think you'll agree, I have plenty to do when I'm out for a walk!

  

  

No Excuses!

It's 10 degrees outside with a stiff breeze that makes it feel like 5 degrees.  There's over an inch of fresh snow on the ground from last night.  The sun is shining, the driveway has been cleared, and the coffee is still hot.  I have a decision to make; go back inside and watch Star Trek, or take a walk.

No excuses!
http://runkeeper.com/user/tracymckibben/activity/68548937

Granted, it wasn't a long one, and it wasn't one of my fastest, but it was a walk.  I feel good that I made the effort.

New Gadgets

Through the blog of another "Get Hawt" participant, I discovered two new gadgets that I'm going to try out in my quest to shed some pounds.  Remember, I'm a gadget guy.  Gadgets help me to see this venture as a sort of game, and games are fun, and anything that makes this effort more fun is definitely welcome.  Both of these gadgets are apps for my phone.

The first app is called Two Hundred Sit-Ups, and appears to be nothing more than a convenient way to follow the Two Hundred Sit-Ups program.  In a nutshell, you start with an honest assessment of how many sit-ups you can do, and from there the program guides you through an increasingly difficult regimen, with the goal being the ability to eventually do 200 sit-ups.  Judging from the grunts and groans that come from just tying my shoes, this should be interesting!

From the same group of people, the second app is called Hundred Pushups, and I'm not talking about those frozen orange ice cream treats.  This is essentially the Two Hundred Sit-Ups system designed for pushups.  The last time I did a pushup was about two years ago, when we first got Wii Fit.  I think I did 10 of them, and haven't done one since.  If you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

Best... Popcorn... Ever...

I've never made popcorn the old-fashioned way.  Ever.  Throw the bag in the microwave, push the "Popcorn" button, then dig in; that's been my strategy for, well, ever.  Knowing that the microwave stuff is terribly unhealthy, and since I'm on this health kick right now, I decided to try making a healthy popcorn.  I can confidently say that I'll never ever open a bag of irradiated popcorn again.

First of all, it was ridiculously easy to make.  Pour just enough oil (I used canola) to cover the bottom of a large saucepan.  Toss in 4 or 5 single kernels of corn, turn on the heat, then wait for those kernels to pop.

Once that has happened, throw in 1/2 tablespoon of butter and some salt, then 1/4 cup of popcorn.  Cover loosely (I used a skillet, turned upside down).  As the popcorn begins to pop, shake the pan back and forth over the hot burner.  Continue until the popping has stopped, then immediately dump the popcorn into a bowl and start eating!

Seriously, this was the best popcorn I think I've ever had.  Certainly better than the microwave stuff, without the extra crap that comes with it.

Also, consider this; Act II Butter Lover's Microwave Popcorn weighs in at 170 calories per serving.  How big is a serving?  Two tablespoons of unpopped popcorn, or 1/2 of the 1/4 cup that I popped (which was split between two people).  According to MyFitnessPal, the popcorn that I made amounted to 40 calories, for the same sized serving.  I've had the Butter Lover's popcorn, there's a partial box in the pantry right now.  The homemade stuff was better, by a long shot.

Here's the recipe that I started with, but I cut the butter way down, and I used slightly less popcorn:
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_popcorn/

Farfalle with Tomatoes, Onions, and Spinach

Tonight was our second meatless dinner this week, another recipes from Cooking Light.  Very quick, very simple, it took me about 15 minutes to prepare.  Basically it's a garlic pasta dish with tomatoes and spinach, very, very tasty and filling.  I also made an olive bread to go with it, also from Cooking Light.  I'm not sure which I liked better, the pasta or the bread, but I was quite pleased.  Wife, not so much.

Pasta:

• 1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon salt 
• 8 ounces uncooked farfalle pasta 
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided 
• 1 cup vertically sliced yellow onion 
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 5 garlic cloves, sliced
• 2 cups grape tomatoes, halved 
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 3 cups baby spinach 
• 3 tablespoons shaved fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 3/4 cup (3 ounces) crumbled feta cheese 
• 
  
• 1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil with 1 tablespoon salt. Add pasta, and cook according to package directions; drain.
• 2. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and oregano; sauté 12 minutes or until lightly browned. 
• 3. Add garlic; sauté 2 minutes. 
• 4. Add tomatoes and vinegar; sauté 3 minutes or until tomatoes begin to soften. 
• 5. Add pasta and spinach; cook 1 minute. 
• 6. Remove from heat, and stir in Parmigiano-Reggiano, remaining 1 tablespoon oil, remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper. Sprinkle with feta.

Bread:

• 1. Preheat oven to 450°
• 2. Unroll 1 (11-ounce) can refrigerated thin-crust pizza dough onto a baking sheet
• 3. Combine 1½ tablespoons olive oil, ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper, and 1 minced garlic clove; brush over dough 
• 4. Sprinkle dough with ⅓ cup chopped kala-mata olives 
• 5. Bake at 450° for 11 minutes or until browned and done 
• 6. Top with 2 tablespoons thinly sliced basil
• 
  

My Love/Hate Relationship With Pepsi

I thought I was eating a decent lunch today.  Not exactly health food, and yeah, I know the pop needs to be out of the picture.

After plugging all of this into MyFitnessPal, I was shocked to see that this is more than 30% of what I'm allowed to eat today!  That can of Pepsi alone accounts for 10% of my total allowed caloric intake.  Time to try giving it up - again.

I've been through this before, stopping for a few weeks, maybe having a soda if we go out to eat somewhere.  Then I'll fall off the wagon and start drinking a can or two every day.  I love the stuff, but then I see something like this, knowing that it's not good for me, and then I start to hate it.

Addictions are hard to break....  My one saving grace today is that I walked 3 miles before eating, burning off 2 cans of Pepsi.

Rotini with White Beans and Escarole

As part of this new "get healthy" effort, we're going to try to have at least two meat-free dinners each week.  Being a hardcore "meat and potatoes" eater, this is going to be easier said than done.

Last night, we tried the first meatless recipe, something I found on the Cooking Light web site.  It's called Rotini with White Beans and Escarole, and as the name implies, it consists mostly of beans, pasta, and something green.  Our first reaction was "what the hell is escarole?"  Turns out, it's just another leafy green vegetable, kind of a cross between celery and cabbage.

The full recipe is below, or you can click on the link above to go to the Cooking Light version.  Basically, you start by boiling the pasta.  Separately, put some olive oil in a pan, use it to heat up some garlic, red pepper flakes, and the escarole.  After a few minutes, dump the pasta and a can of white beans into the pan, mix it all up, sprinkle on some Parmesan cheese, and dig in.  It smells great while cooking, and much to our surprise, tastes pretty great too.  I really liked it.

Give it a try, let me know what you thought of it!


Ingredients

• 8 ounces uncooked rotini
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced (I used minced garlic from a shaker)
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 (12-ounce) bag chopped escarole
• 3/4 cup organic vegetable broth
• 1 (15-ounce) can no-salt-added cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup (1 ounce) shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Preparation

1. Cook pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat; drain.
2. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil to pan, and swirl to coat. Add garlic and red pepper; cook for 45 seconds or until garlic begins to brown, stirring constantly. Add escarole; cook 1 minute or until escarole begins to wilt. Add broth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium; cook for 5 minutes or until escarole is tender and liquid nearly evaporates. Stir in pasta, beans, and salt. Top with cheese.

Is It Hawt In Here Or Is It Just Me?

I'm doing something I've never done before, never thought I would do, and still can't completely believe I'm doing.  No, I'm not moving back to Ohio, I'd move to Iowa before doing that.  The unthinkable deed that I'm referring to is joining a group fitness challenge, and I use the word "challenge" loosely.  More accurately, it's a group "motivation", drawing on the encouragement of others to keep working towards a goal, whatever that goal may be.

In this case, the goal is to generally become more healthy, in our eating habits and in our physical activity.  I already stated all of that in the opening blog post, so I won't repeat it here.  What I'm going to talk about in this post are the tools that we're (we being Missy and myself) are going to use to track our progress and stay on track.  Being a gadget geek, you can bet that I'll be using some sort of electronic doohickey to do this.

The first doohickey is my cell phone.  I've been a long-time user of an app called Runkeeper; I used it on my iPhone, and now I use it on android (don't get me started on which one is better).  The free version is a great app by itself, but I've paid for the premium version, which gets me all sorts of fancy reports, telling me how well I'm doing (or not).  If you look in the upper-right corner of this page, you'll see a "gadget" showing our latest Runkeeper activities.  Feel free to nag us if there's no recent activity there - get us off our butts and moving!

Up next on the gadget list is our Nintendo Wii.  Yes, we have the Wii Fit game, and yes, we've completely lost interest in it, like every other person who bought it.  Along with Wii Fit came the balance board, which doubles as an electronic scale.  We'll be using this to track our weight loss (or gain, if that's how it turns out).  I haven't figured out yet how, or if, I'll be posting that progress, but we will be tracking it.

Finally, this blog itself will be a valuable tool.  As I said in the opening post, if I publicly declare that I'm going to do something, I am much more driven to actually do it.  Face it, nobody wants to be known as "all talk, no walk" (pun intended).

There you have it.  This post is my first contribution to the group effort, a group consisting of some new friends who have been supportive of me in my writing efforts.  Now they're going to be supporting me/us in getting healthier.

Why This Blog?

I've found, through my other two blogs, that if I set a goal and declare it publicly, I'm more apt to pursue the goal.  The wife and I are setting out to cut back on the heavy, unhealthy comfort foods, the fast food, the junk food, and start getting more physically active.  Since I'm already a big walker, it seemed to make sense to start with a walking theme, and see where it goes.  I'm hoping that she'll participate in the blog as well as the diet/exercise effort, but that remains to be seen.  She's been reluctant to become "one of you Twitter people", but I'm working on that.

Anyway, starting today, I'm going to use this blog to publicly declare our/my goals, progress, significant events, etc.  You'll probably see recipes here, an occasional challenge, who knows.  I guess you'll have to follow along to see just what we do with this.  Nothing's off the table at this point.  Except this: