The Newest Bitch Sister & The WALL

Jerry scored me a free Weider 8530 Four Station Weight Machine with attachments earlier this week on Craig's List. Today was the first opportunity I got to take photos of our newest Bitch Sister. She's in almost new condition. I haven't had a chance to do a real workout on her but we tried her out. The other two weight machines - known as The Bitch Sisters - are here to stay but now all three of us can workout at the same time.























































I'm still fasting, on day two, because the colitis pain is still up there. But it's better. Seems like it takes me longer to get over a flare as I get older. I've got to be more diligent about what goes in my mouth (no nuts, seeds, beans, corn products, and particularly no high fructose corn syrup). The real problem is when it gets this bad nearly any food going through is an irritant including fruits and vegetables because of the fiber content. Hence the fasting.

An odd side effect of my six day lay off from weightlifting is a reoccurrance of tendonitis in my shoulders. (I've had intermittent tendonitis in various joints since 1980). One of the corrective therapies for tendonitis is working out, and for these shoulder tendons (for me, I'm not recommending anything to anyone) is pull ups. Pulls ups stretch out the tendons and they realign. Cerebral Palsy tends to tighten things like muscles, tendons, etc.

I found this out totally by accident. I had horrid tendonitis in my left shoulder for about a month when I received my Power 90X DVDs last May. After a few weeks of waiting for an improvement (my usual routine of infrared Light Therapy, heat, ice, Capzaisin rub, and Shiatsu massage were not cutting it. We're talking a bad ass case of tendonitis). I said "F It! It can't get worse." And I started P 90X. The first day is 'Chest & Back' with 8 sets of maximum repetitions of pull ups (for me it was 12-20 reps a set then). I did the pull ups on my Total Gym on an incline. Almost immediately the pain receded and the next day I was pain free!

Now if I can just talk my colon into doing pull ups...

Construction of The Wall.



























































More photos are coming of our newly built climbing wall...I need to resize them. Jerry's still installing climb holds including real ones like these. (Thanks Don!) And he's experimenting with wood, real rocks, and there's a climbing rope. I got halfway up but the holds don't stick out much because Jerry carpeted the wall so we wouldn't get splinters. Good thing as I ended up hanging by my hands with my feet dangling in the air at least two feet off the ground and my body slapped against the wall. There was no mattress beneath me so I hung there - maybe 5 seconds - until Jerry lifted me down. More on the wall in my next post.

Slowing Down & Fasting

I'm stepping off the merry-go-round this weekend - photo taken 05-11-08 at Mills Park, Carson City, Nevada.














I'm doing a liquid fast today. Protein shakes, fresh homemade juice from my juicer (store bought juices are mostly sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and water), and water with lime. This fast has absolutely no connection to weight loss. (Although weight loss can be achieved through long term fasting you will lose valuable muscle as well thus lowering your metabolism). And I'm only fasting for about 24 hours and being careful to meet my protein and fat requirements.

My goal is to rest my colon - see last post on my recent colitis flare - because it's still driving me up a wall and unfortunately not a climbing wall. This fasting ordeal - really it's not that bad particularly when it lessens pain - has helped before. Most of the nutrition I take in liquids don't reach the affected area of my digestive tract. So it's like sending my colon on vacation to the sunny carribbean for a siesta.

In other news, we scored two heavy duty vinyl 70 X 20 foot flatbed semi-truck tarps in good condition for $75 a piece on Craig's List. Jerry will go to Sparks, NV after work to pick them up. They run around $400 apiece new and will be just the ticket to cover our two 10 x 20 foot garage frames we scored a few weeks ago. One tarp will cover the frames once they're put end to end to make one 10 x 40 foot storage unit. One tarp is supposed to also cover my back yard exercise 'room' as well.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend. I plan on getting some rest on this one. (Crossing my fingers). We plan on staying home, Jerry is planning on working on our outdoor climbing wall, and Bruno will probably help him. I probably will post as I'm going to be home. We have a lot going on so there's plenty of stuff to cover.

Links:

The dangers of fasting and liquid diets

Healing Chronic Digestive Problems

Indoor Garage Climbing Wall

In The News - One More Reason To Exercise and To Fast or Not To Fast, That Is The Question

How Nutrition Affects The Breakdown Of Fats

Science Daily — Scientists have shown that when either lean or obese individuals exercise after eating a high fat meal, their fats are broken down and oxidized in skeletal muscle, making them healthier. These results show for the first time how a high fat diet and exercise stimulate the breakdown of fats and may help design ways to reduce excessive fat in the body.

Fat is broken down inside fat cells to generate energy by a process called lipolysis. The resulting fatty acids are released into the bloodstream and carried to tissues that require energy. In obese individuals, too much fat accumulates, compromising lipolysis, but the details of how this happens are not well understood. Also, obese individuals can show altered responsiveness to the stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine in their subcutaneous fat.

Max Lafontan and colleagues investigated how fat is broken down in both lean and obese subjects who exercised after either fasting or eating a high-fat diet. They noticed that after eating a high-fat diet, fats were broken down in both lean and obese individuals. Under fasting conditions, the breakdown of fats was more pronounced in the lean subjects, but the high fat meal enhanced lipolysis in the obese subjects.

The scientists also studied the effects of long-chain fatty acids (LCFAs) -- which are found in high fat diet -- on cultured fat cells. They noticed that LCFAs increase lipolysis when it is induced by epinephrine, one of the hormones known to stimulate lipolysis.

By showing for the first time how a high fat diet and LCFAs affect hormone-induced lipolysis in fat cells, this study paves the way for further research on the role of various fatty acids on the metabolism of muscle and blood vessel cells, the researchers conclude.

Article: "Acute exposure to long-chain fatty acids impairs alpha2-adrenergic receptor-mediated antilipolysis in human adipose tissue," by Jan Polak, Cedric Moro, David Bessiere, Jindra Hejnova, Marie A. Marques, Magda Bajzova, Max Lafontan, Francois Crampes, Michel Berlan, and Vladimir Stich

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Alternate-day Fasting: How Good Is It For Your Health?

Science Daily — Researchers report that fasting or eating half as much as usual every other day may shrink your fat cells and boost mechanisms that break down fats.

Consuming less calories and increasing physical activity is usually what people do to lose weight and stay healthy. But some people prefer to adopt a diet which consists of eating as much as they want one day while fasting the next. On each fasting day, these people consume energy-free beverages, tea, coffee, and sugar-free gum and they drink as much water as they need.

Although many people claim that this diet, called alternate-day fasting (ADF), help them lose weight and improved their health, the effects on health and disease risk of ADF are not clear.

Krista Varady and colleagues studied the effects of alternate-day fasting on 24 male mice for four weeks. To assess the impact of ADF on the health of the mice, the scientists not only tested mice that followed and didn't follow an ADF diet, but they also studied mice that followed the diet only partially: a group of mice consumed 50 percent of their regular diet every other day (ADF-50%) and another consumed 75 percent of their regular diet every other day (ADF-25%).

The scientists noticed that the ADF-100% mice lost weight and the fat cells of both the ADF-100% and ADF-50% groups shrunk by more than half and by 35 percent, respectively. Also, in these two groups of mice, fat under the skin -- but not abdominal fat -- was broken down more than in mice that did not follow the diet.

These results suggest that complete and modified ADF regimens seem to protect against obesity and type 2 diabetes but do not result in fat or weight loss. More studies will be needed to confirm whether the long-term effects of ADF regimens are beneficial for health and reduce disease risk, the scientists conclude.

Article: "Effects of modified alternate-day fasting regimens on adipocyte size, triglyceride metabolism and plasma adiponectin levels in mice," by Krista A. Varady, D. J. Roohk, Y. C. Loe, B. K. McEvoy-Hein, and M. K. Hellerstein

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.