Tuesday, February 21, 2012

water buffalo, t-tap, and refrigerate your syrup, people

I drank 20 ounces of water before 6 AM today.  Holy cow.


I'm very cyclical about water.  I don't understand the reasons for it, but sometimes I love water and can't get enough of it, and sometimes I just really don't want it, and have to make myself drink it (which I sometimes do, and sometimes don't).  In the past few weeks (really, since around the first time I made a green smoothie) I have been trying to be more intentional about water, despite not really craving it.  I've done better on a lot of days, though not all of them.  


Awhile back I said I was going to get a water bottle for when I run.  I haven't done that yet.  I just drink an ounce or 2 before I go, and an ounce or 2 when I get back.  I haven't wanted to make the time to shop for a bottle, and I haven't wanted to contend with the sloshing water bottle as I run, and...well...I just haven't wanted to, okay?


But this morning I finally got around to starting the thing I've been wanting to do on my non-run mornings:  the T-Tap program a friend gave me quite awhile back.  I had stashed it for "someday when I have a DVD player" but getting one hasn't been a priority for me at all.  More recently she gave me this little machine that is a DVD player with a screen and all...no need to connect to any TV.  And last night I finally got my act together and found all of that and put it where it was easy to find.  I figured out what I wanted to wear.  Gotta cover all bases before bed, cuz remember I don't to thinking well at 5 AM.  


I like the T-Tap program.  It is not aerobic, it's more isometric, and she says this stuff about a lymphatic flush or something, which I haven't bothered to read up on.  But anyway, it made me sweat a little but not breathe hard.  It made my muscles work, for sure.  Really, it seems like the biggest deal with this lady is keeping everything in alignment, so she's constantly reminding about the positioning of the feet, the knees, tucking the butt and the abs, pushing the shoulders back, etc.  I'm sure I will get the hang of it in a few tries, but it was A LOT to keep track of this morning.  Interestingly, a lot of what I did made my knees do that "crackling like popcorn" thing that so scared the bejeezus out of me when I was doing wall squats at JPUSA.  It doesn't hurt, it just sounds quite ominous and feels exceedingly strange.  But this particular video is made for "people of weight" as in not those who need to lose 5 or 10 pounds, and she emphasized that what we are doing is rehabilitating the knees, which always take a whole lot of punishment for "people of weight"  (I  repeat it because I DO like that expression better than all the mean ways we talk about ourselves!)   


So the reason I drank so much this morning was because early in the video and all throughout it, she pauses and says to go take a sip of water.  I hadn't thought to have a water bottle ready (evidence that I don't hang out in exercise classes) but happily for me, the night before last I followed a strange impulse I had:  I took a bunch of glass bottles with screw tops that I was saving to recycle (they are from all-natural sweet drinks I buy at the health food section of my store) and I filled them with filtered water and stuck 'em in the fridge.  It's not really *like me* to do that - after all, I have the Brita pitcher in the fridge and plenty of glasses.  But I felt like I should do it, and I'm learning to follow those strange impulses because, like this time, they generally later turn out to have been apparently promptings from the Lord.  So when she said to go get a sip of water the first time, I was able to sprint to the fridge and grab a bottle, all ready to go, and not miss a second of my workout.  Cool beans, eh?  And though the workout wasn't cardio at all, those little sips added up, and I was sweating just enough afterward that I was more than happy to polish off the second half of the bottle all at once.  YAY for water consumption!


In other news, I realized the night before last that the recipe I blogged for rice pudding - the one about which I raved "it has no sweeteners at all" - well, when I was going through my cupboard and found to my surprise that I had opened my 100% pure maple syrup and pondered when did I do that?!  I came to the memory of following the recipe and adding 1/4 cup of it to the batch.  Oh boy I had quite the laugh at Automatic Pilot Karen, who can follow a recipe while watching a movie on her iphone and not even notice one of the ingredients she puts in!  I am fairly well amazed that none of you smarted off and told me how silly I was being!  For the record I DO know that maple syrup, even of the 100% pure kind, IS a sweetener.  It wasn't a knowledge problem, it was an A.D.D. issue, okay?  Eek.  


Last related note:  a friend shared with me that 100% pure maple syrup goes in the fridge after opening it, cuz it's not just a bottle of sugar like the other stuff on the shelf.  It's a real, wholly natural product, and needs the fridge so it won't mold after opening.  I looked on the bottle and she is right!  It says "refrigerate after opening."  Who knew?  Ah well, live and learn. 

1 comment:

  1. The crackling popcorn knees are why I am having such a difficult time exercising and simply going up & down stairs right now. Does this T-tap exercise happen to be on the internet? I am interested in this type of exercise and anything that will strengthen my knees.

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