Photo: marc e marc

So the random number generator just got a vigorous workout, and we have quite a few winners to announce in our Big Ass Fall Giveaway.

Are you one of them?

If you see your name here, please email Crabby McSlacker @ gmail.com (but skip the spaces) to claim your prize by the end of the day (midnight, PST) Friday November 13th. (Note: if you are superstitious, you may want to make sure to email earlier). Please include your mailing address and real name (or at least one that won't confuse your mail-delivery person.) You also might want to remind me which prize you won, so I can forward it promptly to the right sponsor's representative. Warning: If you don't check in on time, your prize will go to someone else!

And if you don't see your name? So sorry! But hang in there, because any unclaimed prizes will be re-awarded and you still might win something.

(For more information about the prizes and sponsors, please see the original Fall Giveaway Post.)

And now, a drumroll please....



The winners are:

Grand Prize: The TRX Home Training Bundle

Moonlight Dancer

The $150 Giftcard for a customized T Shirt Quilt from Campus Quilt Co

Pixie

Vitalicious Super Sampler Pack

Gwendrr
dragonmamma/naomi
Certifiably Fit
Little M
bdaiss
Heather
Jody-Fit at 51

Books from Green Mountain Spa (US and Canada)

The Diet Survivor's Handbook:

Choosing Losing

Feeding the Hungry Heart: The Experience of Emotional Eating

TheGardenWeigh

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom:

Beanie

"Groove" headphones:

Tina
Hilary (of the Smitten Image)
Java Chick

Pulse Yoga I Basic DVD

Taylor
Gina Fit by 41

True North Sample Packs

Gretchen
Nicohle
Christine
Jenn
Robert

Atkins sampler

Grace
Rosa
Shelley
Katey
sekhmetsat


Silk Heart Soy Milk:

J.C.
Lillian's Mom
Cammi99
Lady in Weighting
Theresa
theskinnyplate
JustMe
Feed Me I'm Cranky
Carrie
Messymimi
Laura E.
SamSam26
The Gazelle
Slimsdotter
Ruth

ME Beverage Sampler:
Midknyt
EssBee
Gayla B
Tatya
Atta Girl

Thanks for playing, everyone, and sorry there weren't enough prizes for everyone. And thanks for hanging in there during my break; actual health and fitness posts coming next week!

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(Photo: Janet_Farthing)

I love lists. Call me anal (you're anal) but there's something about the order and brevity that appeals to me. I especially love the kind where an expert is called upon to put everything I need to know about a certain topic into a nice, easy-to-follow format instead of having to go out and research it all by myself. And if it happens to relate to a subject that has haunted interested me for years, all the better. So when I saw this list of the Top 10 Fitness Myths, I put aside my macaroni and cheese omelet and began to read.

1) Crunches will burn fat off your abs. First things first: addressing the fat that's covering those abs through diet and exercise has to come before the crunches. In essence, make sure your underwear isn't on over your clothes.

2) There is an easy way to lose weight. There are some "truisms" in life that you know right away are a load of b.s. - "It's not about the money", "This will only hurt a little", and "On time and under budget" - and this is just another one of them. There is a multi-billion dollar industry that's been built upon making it look easier than it really is. Hard work and perseverance are still the answer. If it was easy, I would've found and exploited it by now and Bill Gates and Oprah would be working for me.

3) If you don't have time to get in the government's recommended 30-90 minutes a day, you shouldn't bother. Smaller sessions totaling up to your overall daily quota are still beneficial. (My guess is they're referring to exercise here and not the wait time for your swine flu shot that hasn't even been shipped to your part of the country yet.)

4) Weightlifting makes women bulky. Not unless you're using steroids and/or are in the New York Yankees line-up - which I realize is redundant. (And why, yes, I am a sore loser Red Sox fan - no redundancy intended.)

5) You aren't working hard enough if you aren't dripping in sweat. I assume that they're referring to my own sweat here and not the second-hand sweat spraying off that uber-runner guy on the treadmill next to me. Workout intensity, temperature and a variety of other factors determine how much you sweat.

6) Workouts should hurt. Dentists, dating, mammograms and parenting - yes. Workouts - no. A little soreness a day or two later is common but anything beyond that really isn't and is a sign of something gone wrong.

7) If you stop exercising, your muscles will turn to fat. Your muscles will probably get smaller and/or atrophy but your fat will get fatter all on its own if you stop working out. Fat and muscle tissue are different and seem inversely related; like they take turns being the dominant one - a little bit like the Clintons.

8) As you age, you will lose muscle and gain fat. Part of this might be true, actually, because of your declining metabolism, in which case resistance training can help retain lean muscle - which is not to be confused with resisting change; another more insidious sign of aging (Also see: "Oldsmobile cravings" and "Dinner for two" oops - sorry, that should be "Dinner AT two").

9) Workouts must be intense to burn fat. Surgery is intense. So are IRS audits and air traffic controllers. That philosophy major your dated in college was too. Workouts don't have to be. They can be just as effective at burning fat at lower intensities but you have to do them longer. Plus, you lower the burn-out factor by making them easier to withstand.

10) Stretching isn't important because it won't make you thinner. Stretching is like adding oil to your car's engine - just try driving without it and then you'll appreciate its importance. Missing workouts because of injuries caused from not stretching properly will add to your bottom's line.

So what about it - have you fallen for any of these myths or can you think of any others that could have made the list?

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Photo: TooFarNorth

Did you dress up as a double-humped camel for this year's Halloween party and everyone kept asking where your costume was? Do you feel like you're retaining more water than the Hoover Dam without the increased hydroelectric benefit to your utility bill? Have you surpassed the Great Salt Lake as our country's largest inland salt water body? Does your blood pressure reading have the folks at NASA saying, "Man, that's high"? Have you been exercising and watching what you eat and STILL can't lose weight? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may have a sodium problem.

The salt from your shaker might be the least of your worries given the hidden sodium in many processed and restaurant foods (even if it doesn't taste salty - it's in there) - accounting for about 80% of our daily consumption. On average, we should only be taking in about 2300 milligrams (about one teaspoon) of salt a day. But as you might expect, we Americans like to do everything big and are actually consuming about 3400 mg a day. Our sodium intake has risen 55% in the last 35 years and shows no signs of abating. I wish the same could be said about my salary.

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is the most common danger associated with consuming too much salt. The AMA labeled the need to reduce sodium from our diets an "urgent" public health issue. But since when have we ever listened to advice that was good for us - especially when we insist that our food be as fast as the pace of our lives? But addressing this issue may not be as difficult as we think - and let's face it, we can all get on board with something that's easy. It just takes a bit of planning and awareness.

If perusing the nutritional labels of our food proves too taxing, then try this quick reference guide to see where your favorites fall on the sodium scale. You should really make yourself aware of what's in your food - besides your fork or spoon. You might even be surprised about some of the foods you're using if you're attempting to lose weight. For example, one cupt of 1% milk fat cottage cheese contains 918 mg (I never liked the stuff anyway) and 3 ounces of Alaskan King crab has 715 mg (no wonder it's so crabby). And one cup of canned baked beans for that all-important fiber? A mere 1,008 mg. Remember how we switched from the potato chips in the big Trans Fat Scare of a few years ago to the healtheir alternative of baked pretzels? Right. Well, ten of those hard plain salted alternatives have 1,029 mg. Some canned vegetable juice cocktails, while claiming to provide several servings of veggies in their drink, also contain 653 mg per cup. Tomato juice (in the can with salt added) has 877. Yeah, drinking your veggies seemed just a little too good to be true.

Kicking the can habit could spare you a lot of sodium. Three ounces of white tuna canned in water has 320 mg while raw albacore has 34. A like amount of canned salmon, 471, versus its cooked sockeye cousin at 56 is a no-brainer (even if it IS considered brain food). Non-canned beans, such as lentils cooked without salt, have a low per one cup serving of 4 mg. Now that's some change we can believe in.

Cooking family favorites that come in a box or can could be cooked from scratch with a lot less of the sodium involved. From scratch, you say? Who's got time for that?! I don't mean making everything from scratch, like the pasta or having your own free-range chicken farm, but the things you like in it or on it such as fresh veggies (vs canned) or cheese, oil, chicken, etc. There are also plenty of non-salt seasonings that could flavor up your meals, too.

Eatings foods that are high in potassium can have the reserve impact on your blood pressure than salt does. Here, unfortunately, the equation of how much we should get daily versus how much we do get is the inverse of the sodium math. We should get 4700 mg of potassium daily but typically average about 2300. Some good sources of potassium are apricots (not canned), bananas, spinach, tomatoes, lima beans and prunes. In the case of potassium (and some folks may have sensitivities to it), supplements are not good substitutes for the real McCoy. And as ever, a doctor or nutritionist are always the best sources of information concerning your health and diet.

So next Halloween, when you're recycling/reusing/repurposing or just plain wearing that camel costume again, I bet you'll need a name tag.

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This is just a quick post with a few vacation pictures--I promise, actual health and fitness blogging will resume shortly!

As I'm starting to try to catch up with everything I've missed, I just wanted to chime in and add a brief "hell yes" to a couple of Jo's recent pro-exercise posts. (In case you missed them, one is about lifelines and the other is on kicking ass at IKEA.)

Because while Jo is a lot more hard-core in her workouts than I am (whereas I'm more hard-core when it comes to whining), I have to agree with her: staying in decent shape makes life a heck of a lot more enjoyable.

Yep, still using that strappy thing!

Anyway, perhaps our favorite stop on the road trip was Mount Zion National Park. It's just one of many amazing national parks we've visited in the area, and we keep swearing we'll make it back to the southwest more often.

The Lobster likes it too.

But to best experience glorious scenery, you gotta get off your ass and walk around in it! It's not the same peering out the windows from the shuttle bus, or visiting the 3-D giant screen theater version just outside the park.

Even Crabby can't help smiling when she goes hiking.

So on our last morning at Zion, anticipating a long day in the van, I headed out on what I thought was going to be a relatively flat trail for a run. But I hadn't checked it out very carefully; turns out it wasn't a flat trail after all but rather a slow steady climb, with increasingly impressive views along the way. (Note: for those who've been to Zion, this trail was of course NOT Angel's Landing; I am far too chicken-shit to attempt that one.)

In short: it was more a hiking trail, not so much a running trail, at least not for a slacker-runner like me. But I was listening to great music and feeling psyched about being in such a lovely setting. I felt like running, not walking. So I kept chugging up the hill and chugging up the hill and made it to the top and then partway down and back up again (it was not all that long) and it was AWESOME! I got to experience the sort of runner's high that had me grinning for the rest of the morning.

And I couldn't help but think how lucky I was to have the chance to do that. I felt grateful for every tedious workout I'd done in order to "stay in shape."

Not that I plan to stop complaining about how miserable working out can be sometimes--this is Cranky Fitness, after all. I just love to get those little reminders every now and then that an active lifestyle actually feels better, and all that effort is totally worth it.

Note: Sorry for the world's most boring blog post; we just got to the Bay Area and are starting to unpack and I can't seem to find the box in which I put my sense of humor. I swear I had one before we left...

Thanks, everyone, for hanging in there during my break! (Oh, and don't forget the Fall Giveaway Check-in deadline is tonight).

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IKEA.

Yes, fiends and neighbors, I made a run to IKEA, land of flat-pack furniture, yesterday.

While I was there, I hauled a number of sixty-pound boxes off a number of shelves, along with some twenty-pound boxes and a couple of smaller things, and put all of said poundage into a cart.

Then I hauled it outside to the long-suffering Honda.

Then I hauled it out of the L.S.H and into the house.

And, finally, with the aid of most of a six-pack, a delivery pizza, and plenty of Ramones, I put the IKEA stuff together, took everything save the washer, dryer, and treadmill out of my utility room, painted the utility room, and put everything back in.

All told it took me six hours of steady hard labor. That was six hours of steady hard labor that I wouldn't have been able to do at thirty, and which most people couldn't manage at thirty-nine--and I was able to do it all because I work very hard at being strong and fairly fit.

Think about it like this: working out, especially at things that are *hard*, does two things:

It teaches your body how to respond to hard work that doesn't involve barbells, and

It teaches your brain that even the most horrible misery is temporary.

If you're really serious, you can even train your brain to remember that the results are almost always worth it.

Attila just left. She worked me hard even though I'm still sore from yesterday's renovation adventures. For that reason, this is all the post I'm going to be able to manage. Remember this, though:

Being able to outlift the dudes in the belts at IKEA?

*Totally* a rush.

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