“Fitness” – defined?

According to both the Oxford English Dictionary and Miriam-Webster Online, ‘fitness’ is the “the quality or state of being physically fit.”  Grrr, it really bothers me when the dictionary uses the word in the definition! I mean really, that’s not really much help. When ever they do that, it leaves me thinking “ok, so…?”

Well, to know more you then have to look up the word fit. Not counting the definitions for medical problems, states of anger, conditions of clothing or british slang, we are left with the understanding that to be ‘fit’ is to be “in good form or condition” and also to be “prepared” or “ready.” Do you find it strange that this word “fitness” and the concept that it entails, upon which an entire industry is based, doesn’t have a clearly stated definition?

I do. So, what do you say? Let’s construct a new definition of fitness…

the borg scale

I’m sure that you’ve heard about the fact that there are recommended ‘levels’ for training that are based on your heart rate. By calculating your ‘maximum heart rate” and then figuring out a range based on percentages of that rate, you can optimize your workouts to match your goals (fat loss, endurance, heart strength, etc.). But what if you happen to be one of the millions of Americans with high blood pressure who are being treated with a drug class known as a “beta-blockers”?

Portabello&Basil Quinoa

O.K. Folks, if you are not familiar with Quinoa (keen-wah) just give in, right now, and get familiar with with. It is, by far, one of the most flexible grains I have ever cooked with. Not only that, but Quinoa has more PROTEIN than any other widely available grain AND has higher proportions of the 6 essential AMINO ACIDS! 

Anyway, sorry I didn’t take pictures but I just made this dish and it is easy and DELICIOUS!

Here’s what you’ll need:

1/2 cup Quinoa

1 cup Water

1/2 teaspoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)

Put those 3 ingredients into a small small saucepan, to the heat to medium-low and let it cook for about 20 minutes. No stirring necessary.

Once you have some cooked Quinoa, prepare the “Stir-in” ingredients. Here’s what you need:

From my iPhone

Well, I had to get out if the house so that I could focus. Everything was going just fine until I decided to connect my laptop to the Wi-fi…That’s when I found out that only my iPhone has access

I was sad for about a minute, until I discovered the WordPress app for iPhone Oh but wait, I’m supposed to be writing a draft research proposal!

Tri-Fecta-Peppa Steak

Last week, I blogged about my menu for the coming week and how I cook it and pack it all up in advance. Well, my friend Dr. Mack asked me about the “Pepper Steak” that I mentioned in the post. Since, I’d been thinking about blogging my actual preparation of certain foods, I decided this was the time to do it.

Before I get into it, let me just say make a couple of acknowledgments and concessions. First, I realize it can be difficult to plan meals in advance, especially if you’ve never done it before! Second, if you have a partner or maybe even a family, I  can empathize with the challenges you face and I’m not sure if this recipe will work. Finally, I’m not a Chef or even a great Cook but, this PeppaSteak is palatable and, as you’ll see, you can eat it several different ways.

Prepare your ingredients. This is what I’m using:

0.75 pounds top sirloin
1/2 yellow onions
1/2 green pepper
1/2 red pepper
3 cloves of garlic
dash of salt
dash of cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp Olive Oil

• Make sure the meat is sliced thin
• Slice the onions however you want them sliced
• I already had these peppers cut into chunks for easy snaking, but it would have been better to have them sliced, lengthwise.

…it also would have been better to have MORE of them, but I kept some aside

5-minute “Movement Break”

Just the other day I was looking for more interesting people to follow on Twitter. To be specific I was looking for Personal Trainers to follow. In a search on “Twellow.com” I found @fatlosswarrior and the whole reason I decided to follow him was this one tweet, admonishing me to “get up and take 5-minute movement break; I clicked follow and then got out of my chair and started doing some calisthenics.

At first, I couldn’t believe how slowly that 5 minutes was passing! I started thinking “I can’t just march or jog in place for 5 minutes!” and then I just decided to start doing some different exercises. This is what I did in 4 minutes and 30 seconds:

• 10 Free Squats
• 12 Push-ups
• 50 Jumping Jacks
• 10 Pea Pickers
• 10 Windmills
• 12 Push-ups
• 15 Bicycle Crunches

All that in just 5-minutes! So today, I was sitting down at my computer to work on this blog and I decided to limit my time. I set a timer (on my iPhone) for 50-minutes. When the timer went off, I got right up and did the routine (today I had time to add 5 pull-ups).

If for some reason I don’t get any other planned exercise in today, at least I know I did something!

If you are not sure how to do some of the exercise, put in a comment. I’ll work on a post with details soon.

Until then; take care,

David