Playlist: Run It Out

So, I’m thinking of moving my blog to somewhere other than blogspot. It’s been good for my purposes so far, but it may not accommodate all of the changes I want to make. Would love to hear your opinions/suggestions in the comments if you are so inclined.

One of the features I want to add is a tab/section for workout playlists. When I was a fitness instructor—long before the days of mp3s, or CDs—I loved creating playlists with fun themes to complement different workouts. My fitness level has certainly changed from those days—tell me again, why did I give up a job that paid me to work out a minimum of five times a week?—but I still love creating playlists for different workouts.

Here’s one I like for a run/walk on the treadmill. It’s just the list, sorry. No links to download, but if you think you’ll like this kind of thing as a regular feature, I’ll look into it.

Run It Out Playlist
1. Rich Girl, Hall & Oates
2. Gonna Fly Now, Rocky Orchestra
3. By the Way (album version), Red Hot Chili Peppers
4. Eye of the Tiger, Survivor
5. Rock You Like A Hurricane, Scorpions
6. Message of Love, Pretenders
7. I’ ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight, U2
8. No One Is To Blame, Howard Jones

This playlist is about 31 minutes. I like to use it for what I call a “dirty 30,” one of those workouts when you don’t have a lot of time, but you still want to get moving. Hall & Oates is a nice, bouncy warm-up. Trying singing along, from your diaphragm, on the don’t you know’s. Rocky music, Gonna Fly Now & Eye of the Tiger, is great motivation. By the Way has a nice shift of speeds if you like to do intervals. If I don’t feel like sprinting, I’ll change the elevation on my treadmill to make it more challenging. Try to clap and keep pace on the oooh-ahhh’s. Scorpions—if this isn’t the best song for running on an incline, I don’t know what is. Admittedly, the lyrics are totally sexist. But that’s not really what I’m thinking about when I’m working out. Message of Love has a good, easy beat to use for pace. Dig with your elbows to get more momentum as you run. The U2 song is the pusher. Just push through that and you know you’re almost at the end. I think the lyrics help, “It’s not a hill, it’s a mountain, when you start out the climb.” Finally, a nice cool-down with Howard Jones.

Let me know if you like it/how you would use it.

Making the Best of It

One of the biggest challenges of healthy living is the dreaded “change of plans.” If we had time to plan every single meal and activity, we’d always make good choices. But sometimes things don’t go quite the way we anticipate and we can be tempted to chuck our diet or exercise plan for the day, which can lead to a binge or a long period of inactivity, derailing our carefully thought-out routine.

But it doesn’t have to be that way if you prepare. I want to share with you something that happened today. In 48 hours, we are leaving for vacation. As usual, I have a million things to do, three writing assignments to finish, and my husband is working every night (and therefore sleeping every day) until we leave.

Earlier today, while waiting for my car to be serviced, I took the opportunity to take a walk and get some exercise instead of sitting in the waiting room and watching TV and gorging on the free popcorn they offer their customers. (Besides, the combined smell of tires and hot popcorn is a bit nauseating!) The temperature was over 100, but I went slow and just concentrated on moving since I knew that my massive chore list would prevent me from getting in my regular workout.

Tonight’s dinner was supposed to be sandwiches, and for tomorrow night I planned to order pizza. (It’s a “sometimes” food, but I’ve learned that the trick is to order a smaller pizza so I’m not tempted to eat so much or have leftovers for lunch the next day.)

Unfortunately, because of the heat, the last few slices of bread I had carefully saved for tonight’s dinner had gone bad. Now what? My default response was to hit our local drive-thru, but I had planned pizza for tomorrow and didn’t want “sometimes” food two nights in a row. Well, I managed to convince my daughter she could have her sandwich on a leftover hamburger bun from our barbecue a few days ago. And I did find two pieces of bread in another bag, so my son got those for his sandwich.

Wonderful, now what about Mom? I poked through my nearly empty fridge and pulled together: one chicken Italian sausage, a handful of shredded mozzarella, and handful of shredded parmesan, some liquid egg whites, and some chopped tomatoes. The packages for these items were already opened, and nearly empty, and I probably would’ve wound up throwing them out before we left. But I scrambled it all up instead. The end result was delicious, filling and surprisingly healthy. Less than 300 calories, and to tell you the truth, it tasted even better than the sandwich I’d planned to make. What a victory.

Experiences like this teach us that it is possible to take a negative and turn it into a positive. All it takes is a little planning and creativity and you will be set up for success. By keeping those items in my fridge, I was able to make a good choice instead of caving in to the convenience and temptation of fast food. And it took me less time to make that healthy dinner than it would’ve taken to go through the drive-thru and come back.