First training ride with Chris

Hello lovelies.

I hope your spring break is nice and comfy. Mine certainly is and I'm glad that I have tomorrow off too.

Today Chris and I took our bikes out for a ride around the Markkleeberger See. And I took my Polar watch with me so I can present you the stats. The ride was ca. 20 k long and it took us about 1 hour. There was a wild water competition going on, so we stood at the entrance and watched for a few minutes. We've had strong head wind now and then, but most of the time it was lovely and the weather stayed nice. The forecast said rain for today. Lucky us.

So here are the stats:
time: 1:16 hrs. (with watching and photography stops, the pictures are crap, though)
in Zone: 52:34 min
HR: 141 bpm

All in all, we've had a lovely ride. The funny thing came for me afterwards. I put my bike back in the basement, got in my room took off my HR watch and stuff, made my bed and drank some water. A few minutes later I made myself a tea and a magnesium drink. When I sat down in my armchair and wanted to write this post I didn't have the energy. I didn't think much about it, but thought "okay I need some Magnesium". Then it hit me, I wanted to take up the glass and it felt like a ton of lead not like a water glass. Nevertheless I drank it up and layed down to recover because all of my energy was gone.

Looking back now, I think I've said hello to the man with the hammer (or he said hello to me?). I've held my carb intake low this week, even though I ate a bag of Othello cookies yesterday. But I didn't eat so much carbs overall. So this 1 hour ride must have brought me to the point of no carbs and my body had to make use of my bodyfat. Wahooooo! These are wonderful news.
Mind you I didn't see this ride as anything that went near this carb/fat change point, since I only reduced my carb intake but nowhere near zero. (At least I thought so.)

This experience is extremely good, because through this my body got the signal to build the necessary fat enzymes to get the energy from my fat depots and not mainly from carbs. That is wonderful. Especially since I obviously am only a 1 hour ride away from this threshold.

Since I have a goal for my weight and my bodyfat, I'll ride again tomorrow.


In any case, I'll have to bring my bike in for maintenance. The gear shift seems to be a bit out of tune. It shifted for no obvious reasons, which isn't exactly helping when I climb a "hill".
But before I do so, I'll go to the car wash and use the high pressure cleansing to get the dirt off of it. Ahh, I know what you think, but it's needed and 1 time in 4 or more years it is okay to do so.

And I know what my next big thing for my sport will be that I buy, a new helmet. I just need to get the money together. 12 € I have already, now I need 188 € more. No I haven't decided yet what kind I'll buy, but knowing me, it won't be ugly or cheap. So I need a bit of cash to buy one that fits and looks good. I've nearly bought one 2 years ago and I think it cost somewhere around 170 €. We will see.

I will also get my bike shoes out and recalibrate my pedals. But I won't wear my clickies without a helmet. I'm not crazy, I already kissed the cobblestones once, that's enough for me. And I have to find my other bike glove, it's MIA since January. >:(


By the way the easter bunny brought me my favourite bathing oil, season three of "Will & Grace" and some sweets. Nice bunny, eh? Was yours nice too?


The finishing touch. My nalgene bottle filled with the Berry-Chocolate-Proteine-Smoothie.



Happy spring break. Hope you get around the man with the hammer.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

April Fool's Day - even my scale

plays a joke on me. Meaning, when I stepped this morning on it, 64,6 kg were shown. 2 kg less then on Monday. Hahahaha. Really funny scale that I have. I don't think that I have lost that much weight in 72 hours. Well at least not fat. :-(

Mampf Diary March 31st
Breakfast (7:30 AM): 1 chocolate protein shake, 1 black tea

Lunch (10 AM to 12 AM): 1 Berry-chocolate -almond - shake, 1 red bell pepper, 1 pear,
Snack (1 PM): Para nuts ´
Dinner (8 PM): green fresh peas and scallops, 3 bites of harzer cheese, 1 cherry yogurt, 1 magnesium drink
10 PM: 1 glass of berry-chocolate-shake (rest of the smoothie I prepared for today)

As you can see I was a bit off the tracks due to the 1st day of Red Week and maybe the lack of sleep, otherwise I would have stuck to my 4hr routine and hadn't eaten that yogurt (too much sugar). I have trouble accomodating to summer time. In the evening I can't conk out and in the morning I have trouble getting up. I hope this normalizes during the next 4 days.

Happy Eastern everyone or whatever you celebrate.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Rotten mood

due to stomach pain. I hate the first day of the "Red Week". Today I just want to sleep through it.

Good news on the food front, though. I stuck to my new food plan for the second full day. YEAH.

Yesterdays Mampf Diary
Breakfast (7 AM): black tea, 1 Banana, 1/2 pear, chocolate proteine shake
Lunch (noon): 2 hard boiled eggs, 1 red bell pepper, 2 radishes, 1/2 pear
4 o'clock:1 chocolate protein shake, 1 magnesium drink
dinner (8 o'clock): salad made of bean sprouts, pak choi (interesting), 2 cherry tomatoes, basil tofu, hemp- and flaxseed, strawberry-mustard-vinaigrette; 1 magnesium drink

I've also took my blender out and prepared the chocolate-berry-proteinshake (frozen berry mix, milk, chocolate proteine powder, strawberry juice, curd, soaked almonds) for todays lunch. Oh wonder, my mom didn't go ballistic. But my dad was totally confused when he saw my blender, thought I did buy it just yesterday.

This morning I withstood the bagels and double chocolate cookies calling my name. (yeah) And this noon everything else from Pizza to cake and chocolate. Para nuts were my saviour.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Paleo / Raw fu and knee results

Morning friends.

Guess what, the results were in yesterday. But for a change my doc wasn't in. Hahaha. He's on vacation this week. Lucky me.
But there isn't just one doc and the other doc was so nice to call me back later that evening.

With BAD news.

Yes, I've got a baker's cyst. But it's quite small and not the real problem.

The real problem is: tadaaaaa, my squished meniscus.

Yep, I've got one of the most common problems of runners. Weak muscles.

Fortunately there is a solution: strengthening the muscles around my knees with giving the meniscus time to heal.

So my next steps are:
- no running for the next month (but cycling and swimming and strength training),
- making an appointment with my ostheopath to speed up the healing process and get some more strengthening drills (done),
- getting the picture CD with the MRIs to go to a good orthopedist (runner or triathlete),
- getting a prescription for drill training at a medical gymnast and
- most importantly getting rid of the excess fat, meaning eating a healthy diet 24/7.


And with that we are at the next topic: FOOD (Mampf Diary).

Like I said yesterday I opened the battle against my body fat (reason for muffin tops and what's worse inflammations and therefore bad skin and the knee problems). Over the last years I tried different eating styles. By far the best for my body and skin were Raw Food and Paleo Diet. So I'll go on a combination of both from now on for the rest of my life. It's a combination, because I need a lot more proteine than most raw food diets contain. And I won't eat raw fish, meat and eggs on a daily basis, that's going too far!!!!

Additionally I realized something. As soon as I get home (my parents house) I fall back into my old habits taking on my child role and wanting to eat right away. Even if I'm not hungry at all in the streetcar. I only need to see the door and my brain goes on automatic and want's me to eat mountains of bad food. Pavlovian reflex at it's best. Well, I've canned another reflex in the last few weeks successfully. So with a little work and iron will I'll conquer this reflex too. Watch out.

One of the many advantages from living in a big city as Leipzig is that I get my hands even on fresh exotic produce. Yesterday I checked out an asian shop in the city. They had quite inexpensive pak choi and bean sprouts. So I got myself a bag of sprouts. No pak choi since I still had some lettuce left at home.

Additionally I went to my local whole food store and got Tofu and strawberry juice.




With these lovely ingredients I whipped up my fantastic and really healthy dinner:


Lettuce, cherry tomatoes, bean sprouts, basil tofu, flax- and hemp seed, strawberry-mustard-pumpkin seed oil-vinaigrette. Yumm and so healthy. I still have a problem to make the right amount. I ended up having made three bowls of this size. I ate them with chop sticks to eat slow, normally I eat too fast.

Today I'll get pak choi after class. I've never eaten it, so I'm quite curious of the taste and what I can do with it.

As of today I change my breakfast routine a bit. I'll incorporate a bowl of fresh cut fruit to it. So todays breakfast consisted of: my usual chocolate protein shake (400ml), my lovely Blue Garden black tea and a banana + half a pear.


And this is my lunch: radish, the other half of the pear, one red bell pepper and two boiled eggs.


Hope your knees are all right.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD.

No good news - edit

SCAR(L)E Day
66,6 kg - I didn't have any need to check the other stats after seeing this.
And look what I found here: http://www.physorg.com/news188995945.html


My knee is acting up since yesterday noon. All due to some walking to the big supermarket on Saturday. The distance combined was just 4 (four!!) k for chrissakes. This is nowhere near my normal walking distances. Looking as it is, even the 10k is in jeopardy. Since it rains today, no cycling either. In any case I'll do my new favourite Monday thing today again, going to my doc to see if my MRI results are there. Wanna bet if they are finally there?

Other than that I had a nice weekend. Fashion drawing workshop. Which was fun and I learned a lot, as soon as I get my designs scanned I'll post them in my style blog. It was also the right time, because the coach had worked in the fashion industry and could give me a few ideas for my current applications. The first one I send out this morning, the next one I'll finish tonight. Saturday evening Chris and I indulged in a french cheese dinner. Pure bliss. And yesterday I archived my films properly and finished the first application and prepared two others.

edit: Just out of frustration of this weight disaster, yes disaster, I've decided to get back on the eating habits that work best for me: Paleo and raw food combined.
My mom will probably go ballistic over this, but I can't help it.
In the last few months I got into a totally unhealthy rut mostly due to my mom (oh San, I've bought Germknödel, now eat it. Germknödel is made of flour, water, yeast and sugar, any questions?!), when it comes to eating. Leading to weight gain instead of loss. (And my Mom stands there telling me I got fat and in the next moment she offers me food!)

I hereby declare the battle against my excess body fat and starchy foods = fast carbs as opened. New food rule, I'll eat as raw and as healthy as possible. This includes my proteinshakes but excludes: sweets, bread, pasta, rice and potatoes and chewing gum.

After the trip to my doc I'll get some sprouts at the asia shop and at home I'll get my lovely blender out. Berry/banana/nut shake and sprout/lettuce salad for Dinner here I come. Lunch was 2 cooked eggs, 2 red bell peppers, radish.

That's it, have a good start in this week.

Welcome to Ken L as a new reader. Glad you're here.

Keep moving forward!

Spring in Leipzig

As promised some pics from Leipzig for you.

Leipzigs New Town Hall tower through the Schiller Park

The "Blechbüchse" (tin can) without the Blech (tin). The old facade you see underneath belongs to a building that was build in 1908. It has always been a departement store. Now it's demolished and a new department store complex will be build there. (Not that Leipzig needed one.)
In any case it's really interesting to have a look at it without the tin, because the facade was build about 10 years before my birth.

One of Leipzigs many churches. From an architectural point of view I really like this one.

I have my fashion drawing class tonight and tomorrow. So I went to the adult educations center yesterday to pay for the class. These are the staircases, they were obviously renovated. Because when I had black & white photography class at the end of the nineties it wasn't this beautiful. Major improvement.

Yesterdays lunch. Yummy and relatively healthy. Dinner was unhealthy as hell, chocolate pudding and chocolate snacks. Well, it's the time of month were I could practically eat chocolate all day.

Todays lunch will be thai food, since it's Friday. Tomorrow evening Chris and I will have a french cheese dinner at my place. With lots of french cheese (goats cheese, yumm), baguette and wine. And maybe shooting some fun fashion pics or watching a fun movie or just chatting away. I'm looking forward to it.

Oh yeah, I rode my bike to project management class today too. And I work on my pedaling. I usually pedal 2 or 3 times and then roll and pedal again. Now I'm trying to get used to constant pedaling. For which I have to focus really hard, because the other way is a habit I got since I learned to ride my bike. Going against habits which lasted for 27 or more years is really hard work. :-P I actually feel uncomfortable in my stomach when I pedal for a "long" time. It's the weirdest feeling. But I'll work on it nonetheless.

Well, I wish you a wonderful and relaxed weekend.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Another amazing pic

Have a look at this:

http://www.clouds365.com/3-24-10-part-2

This is the most amazing picture of clouds I have seen so far. The whole project is totally awesome.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD