Tempting, tasty, tantalizing treats

It's 6pm on Saturday night and you've just turned up at your friends place for dinner. After a day of cleaning, shopping and then going for an afternoon stroll at the local park you realise that you're actually pretty hungry. Dinner is a fair way off, so you begin by chatting over a pre-dinner drink. On the table sits the appetizer, just a wee little snack to get you to dinner. What do you do?

This is something I have been wondering about for months and seeing as it's the weekend, what better time to ask. Depending on where we are, the snacks vary from sweets at my in-laws, salty nuts at my parents, bruschetta with dip, cheese and crackers, those puffed up rice snacks or on the very rare occasion, chopped up veggies. Often it's food that should be eaten in moderation or something that would not cross the threshold of my house because it's too tempting.

I've noticed that when served at our house the snacks disappear very, very quickly. I watched bemusedly last weekend when over pre-dinner drinks I needed to top up the crackers repeatedly and the carrot sticks were left nearly untouched. The outcome was pretty predictable - when the call to the table was made everyone looked sheepish and mumbled that they weren't really very hungry any more.

I wouldn't see a problem if this was an occasional splurge, but if you are doing this most weekends, then up to 2 out of 7 days becomes a problem. I'm speaking from experience here - we have a full dinner with my family every weekend on top of socialising with friends. Sharing food with family and friends is very pleasurable and I like long multi course meals that start out with casual banter over a drink. So the traditional dinner becomes a tug-a-war between being conscious of what I'm eating while still enjoying the moment as well as the effort that has gone into the meal.

So what can you do as a guest? Not turn up so hungry. Yes. Use self control. Absolutely. Randomly wander around friends houses with drink in hand asking about each painting, picture or knickknack until dinner time? Sure, especially if they are renovating (Note to self: make friends with more people who are renovating).

But what about when you are the host? What I want to know is as hosts do we have a responsibility to our friends and family regarding what we serve them, particularly before dinner? Or is it up to each of us to be adults and take responsible for what we put in our mouths regardless of temptation? Do you serve pre-dinner snacks and if so what are your favourites?

Frustrated to the core

There are two types of people in the world; those who like pleasant, fun and enjoyable activities like walking or running or riding a bike; and then there are those who enjoy repetitively lifting, pulling or pushing lumps of steel of various size. I am not one of the latter people and I would like to take this opportunity to publicly declare that I hate strength training (at least now that the novelty of admiring my biceps has worn off). I was going to add a third category of people who don't like exercise at all, but I figured they don't exist right!?!

Begin rant: After an hour working on the fit ball dutifully following the instructions of my paper trainer I was not only exhausted but totally frustrated. I cannot for the life of me find a more boring way to exercise than to do 15 reps x 2 on each side of exercise after exercise. It's like being the machine in Ikea that pounds the chair 5 million times to prove the durability. Up, breath in, down, breath out, up, breath in, down, breath out! It's more boring than staring at the ceiling because at least then I get to think....other than one....two....three.....snore...I mean four....and I was even listening to the radio which although interesting didn't improve the situation at all.

By the end of 500 reps of all the exercises I couldn't shake the feeling that I had just wasted a whole hour of living! And one other thing, no make that two - why does the fit ball like to over complicate simple exercises that done on the floor are doable but done on the ball crush one knee into the floor while cramping other parts of the body that aren't even a part of the exercise? Yes, I'm looking at YOU ball!!

The second thing is the 5 million various exercises that work all the little bitty bits of the body. I hate sitting on the ball reading pages and pages of instructions to end up in a tangle of arms and legs uncomfortably propped up against the ball only to find that I the leg I am supposed to awkwardly be raising at an odd angle is stuck under the other one. All I can say, is thank goodness I'm not a multi armed or legged deity!

End rant: The only good thing I could glean from it is the fact that today I am really sore. And I actually love the feeling because it means I've worked. There has got to be a better way to strength train that lifting, pushing or pulling weights and please, please oh ever knowledgeable and wise bloggers tell me that its yoga!

Which category do you fall in - do you love weights or cardio? Have you found an enjoyable way to strength train?

Mandarins, possums, passion fruit and strawberries

So much juicy goodness

The mandarins are now ripe, so while siting on the front stairs waiting for my mom to arrive I finally picked one. It was ripe, sweet and juicy and so fresher than fresh that I could feel my cells dancing with joy just like when I drink juice. I love the surge of excitement or happiness or ove for something that I enjoy doing. That's how I feel about my garden and the things that grow in it. It's a fair bit of work and the grasshoppers seem to be getting a disproportionally large share but I just love that I can grow at least some of my own food.

The evidence

I went to the back yard and noticed something unusual just by the compost bin - a passion fruit skin with a whole in it. This was clear evidence that the possums had been dining at their local restaurant last night. No wonder they thrive in suburbs! We have at least 2 living in our ceiling and they often eat fresh scraps from the compost bin which is about 20m from where they exit the house. What do they do the rest of the night then apart from making babies! We've had our fair share of those too.

Going out for the evening?

Anyway, I was confused by the skin as we hadn't thrown away any intact passion fruit recently. To my delight, I looked up and there in the mulberry tree was a passion fruit vine that had crept over from the neighbours with 4 deliciously ripe fruit dangling within reach. Heaven. They too are sweet and tantalising on the taste buds.

I hope there more!

Finally, it's time to plant strawberries. We bought 10 plants in a little bundle from the markets last weekend and hope to have a strawberry patch by our front door. They are 'Camarosa' variety which should produce big, red juicy fruit towards the end of the season. It's not an heirloom variety unfortunately and since it crops late we might have to procure some other types to have strawberries all winter long.

The new strawberry plants getting settled in.

Do you grow any of your own food? Ever had that surge of pride from eating something that you had put work into?

Establishing a routine....gulp

Before I have time to change my mind about this 5K thing, I'm committing to a routine. You should know, that I absolutely despise routines so sticking to one may actually be harder then training. I wrote yesterday about not wanting to do it because of flawed motivation but since committing I realised I am ubber excited by the prospect of me being able to run for 5 whole kilometres. I think it is something I used to dream of in high school. It's time I got on with it then isn't it!?!

So the training plan comes from Cool Running: The Couch-to-5K-running-plan. The tittle sold me, but apart from that it seems simple enough to follow. Later down the track, there are also free training sessions through the race organisers so I hope to join in with those. Now for the really boring part, the actual plan:

Monday - Running training
Tuesday - Cycling & Body Balance
Wednesday - Running training
Thursday - Walk & Fit ball workout
Friday - Running training
Weekend - Walk one day, rest other day

Wow! That feels great just writing it down, I could physically feel the excitement (or was it anxiety) rippling through me. One minor detail - I don't have a suitable watch or distance measuring device (so not tech savvy if you can't tell) other than a trundle wheel (just kidding). Any recommendations on one that may be easy to use? Is following strict times or distances actually necessary? Do you have any training advice?

All talk and no action

No figs where harmed during the photo shoot. Afterwards...now that's a different story!

Wanna know what cake we have this week? Probably not but that's not going to stop me! Again we have a layer cake that stands at over 10cm high. This week we have chocolate sponge top and bottom separated from the vanilla sponge by a layer of whipped cream with little jellies in it. And if that wasn't bad enough, we also received a handful of figs stuffed with white chocolate and dipped in dark chocolate. As my Mom packed these treats in a box for us I moaned that I would get sooo fat from all of these sweets. She brushed me off with a 'well if you only have a little piece each day' comment to which my husband promptly responded that the cake and figs were for him anyway! Ah my family is so helpful.

Anyway to the point of this post: a few months ago I decided I needed a fitness challenge. In my typical style I dreamt big - a bit like stating that I wouldn't even have a tiny piece of cake during the week. Yes, I went off and found one of the most physically challenging races I could - an adventure race - and suggested that as an option. Alternatively if the race was only to involve running, then the least I would train for was 10K. No small steps here - unless you're living on the edge you're taking up too much space is my motto!

Mainly because of the difficulty of the challenge I proposed to tackle, I began over analysing the situation in my head. Eventually I came to various conclusions and drafted a multitude of excuses why I shouldn't participate in any race or indeed train for an event. The main one that sticks out is the motivation behind trying to get super fit which has much less to do with health and much more to do with wanting love. I've keep meaning to blog about it (wanting love as motivation) but I haven't come up with a solution to the issue so it just pings around in my brain occasionally. In any case Charlotte at the Great Fitness Experiment wrote a perfect post about it last week. After all, if the motivation for exercising was more about others than myself and I didn't enjoy the process then trying would be bad. After extensive over thinking I have even worked out all the negative consequences I might face if I trained, most notably having higher expectations for my fitness in the future.

So, should the flawed motivation underpinning my desire to be fit enough to run a race stop me from actually training for one? I've finally reached the conclusion that it shouldn't because regardless of the reasons for it, the desire to improve my fitness is alive and kicking inside my head. So I've chosen a 5K run to participate in at the end of August. It's in my diary, it's on the blog so it's too late for thinking. Now I have a few months to train for something that is still a challenge, but not such a far cry from anything I have ever done before that it seems like climbing Mt Everest. I'll finally be taking little steps and not biting of more than I can chew.

Which brings me back to dessert. Little steps right?

The cake is calling to me

Last week it was a rich, fudgy chocolate cake. This week, it's a Polish layer cake that stands at over 10cm tall a slice. The top is covered in chocolate icing and the next layer down is chocolate poppy seed sponge. After that I have no idea, because I was too busy eating my slice on Sunday to listen to the rest. It was delicious, although not as good as last weeks cake. The sad thing is, that I will probably never eat a slice of this cake again. My sister only cooks a recipe once...ever...and although a hefty piece lies invitingly on a plate in the fridge and calls to me, I won't eat it. I'm practising willpower and it hurts a lot. Mainly because I'm not very good at it.

Each week after dinner with my family we bring home some dessert, which usually last a day or two. But then by the second or third night, we've had a taste for sweets after dinner so the ice cream comes out of the freezer or chocolate or maybe some biscuits. Eventually I discover that I am actually eating a lot of sweets even as snacks on the weekend when I'm hungry and we are working on the house or landscaping. So I decided last week to stop having sweets during the week. I've tried every method that I've ever heard recommended to reduce sugar intake, but it simply hasn't worked. So now I am down to willpower, which isn't supposed to be very effective. But last week I got over my plateau by resisting chocolate cake so each time I am about to walk over to get a sugar fix I remind myself about that. I'm not sure how long I can keep my willpower muscle flexed, although it might just hold out until my husband finishes all the sweets in the house!

I'm curious, what are your secrets to controlling your sweet urges? Is willpower really hopeless or is it a show of strength? Isn't willpower supposed to be a good thing?

Myth busting exercise

If you are anything like me - a bit of a novice in this exercise business - then perhaps you are also confused. The confusion stems from the amount of 'helpful' articles written about the best times, activities and speeds of exercise to get you well on your to getting your ideal body or getting over the plateau. And far too often I've trusted those articles that have told me that my exercise programme isn't working because it's not before breakfast or it's not in the optimum fat burning intensity. I've trusted the experts because the more I've learnt about exercise and specifically fat loss, the more confused I've gotten. Forget the 'just do it', because there is a right time and a right place and I obviously don't know what they are otherwise I wouldn't have plateaued. Right? Wrong and Choice is here to de-myth all the things I have believed about exercise and not in a fitness magazine type way. Most of their articles are by subscription, but this little gem isn't so you can read the whole article here. So, lets get to myth busting - here are my favourites.

1. My favourite fact: Chocolate = 1250kJ. One hour walk = 1250kJ. Chocolate here I come. And that's how we all gain weight. Why? (Please someone tell me I wasn't the only one who didn't know this!) Because sitting writing blog post for one hour = 625kJ. So walking only constitutes an additional expenditure of 625kJ over the amount I normally expend.

2. My least favourite fact: The reason I walk is because I'm in the optimum fat burning zone. Yup, that's the reason. It's got nothing to do with being lazy. And it's true that low intensity exercise burns more fat as a percentage of energy burned, except that the total amount of energy is really more important. So increasing intensity and leaving the zone will not only get me fitter, but also use more overall energy.

3. Not justify my hunger fact: If I exercise in the morning my metabolism is increased all day long. Which explains why I'm always hungry after morning exercise. False! While after burn does happen (known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) it is generally overestimated. For a meaningful after burn you would have to work long and hard, so my increased hunger is probably unjustified as is exercising in the morning for the sake of the after burn if it doesn't fit well into my routine.

4. The myth that changed my routine: Exercising on an empty stomach burns more fat. You hear something enough times and you believe it. So during my plateau I figured that if I exercised before dinner instead of after breakfast I would be home and hosed. Again, it's true that after fasting you burn more fat, but the total amount of energy expended is more important that whether it's fat or carbohydrate. Which is wonderful, because now I don't have to feel guilty for not wanting to get up at 5am!

5. It's a shame it's almost winter fact: I've always heard that swimming is not helpful for fat loss, not that I ever understood why and spent countless laps trying to work it out. Anyway, it's false as long as you don't eat more because you just spent lots of time in cold water and you work hard enough.

How about you? Did you know all of these already? Got any more of your own?