Pass (on) the Salt

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.

Almost Back...

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).

I have a one-word reason why fitness is important:

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.

Ready, Set,... Ah Hell.

Preliminary Note: Are you entered in the Cranky Fitness Fall Giveaway? Do check the post before this one for an important update.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Is Transition Time Eating Up Your Day?

Does anyone else find that a really huge and annoying percentage of the day seems to take place not actually doing things, but getting ready to do things and tidying back up after the things have been done?

"Going to the gym," for example, may consist of working out for an hour or so, but is that really how much time you need to budget for it?

No, of course not! Not unless you work as a personal trainer or have a home gym and happen to spend all day in your gym clothes, ready to go at any moment. Oh, and you'd also need to manage to work out vigorously without perspiring.

Depending on your routine, "going to the gym" could also consist of finding your car keys or bus pass, collecting all your gear, driving/riding/walking to the gym, waiting in line at the front desk, chatting with friends, changing into workout clothes, using the restroom, working out (which could also including waiting for machines or class to start or whatever), going back to the locker room, stripping off your sweaty clothes, showering, drying your hair, applying deodorant/lotion/sunscreen/make-up or whatever you tend to slather on yourself, putting on your clothes again, getting back into your car... and then, finally, getting ready to do the next thing.

Don't You Hate It When You Realize
You've Forgotten Something Important?
Photo by NataliaEnvy

And yet, some folks stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that life is like this. They are surprised, every single time, when things take so much longer than they should. How come the day is over already and so many things didn't get done?

It's my theory that people who tend to be lead healthy, balanced, productive, yet stress-free lives are often really good at mastering transitions.

Alas, I am not one of those people.

I would further hypothesize that there are at least two important components to mastering transitions, both of which I suck at. But if you, unlike me, actually want to work on these two things, perhaps you can be one of those Successful, Balanced, Healthy, Stress-Free Productive People!

1. Prepare Ahead or Improvise?

Some people are natural "prepare ahead" types; others may have to try to teach themselves this skill. Pack your gym bag the night before your workout! Make a list of things you need to pick up after work! Have a single place to keep your keys so you don't put them down all over the house and then forget where! Think through meal planning, shop for days/weeks/months in advance, cut things up for the week ahead, make extra portions to freeze for later, and have lots of matching food storage containers that are not warped and actually have tops!

There are people out there who actually do all this stuff, consistently, and you rarely see them at work all wild-haired because they forgot to bring a brush to the gym, or guiltily scarfing sad vending machine items because they didn't manage to pack a healthy lunch.

Those of us who wait until we're hungry for dinner and then stare into the refrigerator and realize we need to go shopping unless we want to make a meal out of microwave popcorn and canned tuna and raisins? And then three hours later we're back from the store and actually finally eating something and wondering if the dishes will just this once agree to do themselves because, damn it, it's bed time already?

We're the ones who don't tend to get stuff checked off our "to do" lists very often. (Not that we're very good about making them in the first place).

2. Philosophical or Frantic?

Whether you prepare well or not, there's a certain amount of transition time that everyone has to go through. We need to gather things up, we need to get ourselves places, we must wait in lines and endure delays and deal with things that break at the wrong time or people that don't do what we want them to.

Some people take a very Zen* approach to everyday transitions. Life is life! Might as well enjoy each precious moment! So what if those moments are piling up and you're stuck in a long line at the grocery store and the cash register does something funny but the clerk doesn't know how to fix it and the supervisor is busy elsewhere and no one is opening another checkstand and a little boy is screaming Mommy Mommy Mommy Lookit Me Lookit Me over and over and over but Mommy is still not Lookitting?

Smile! It is what it is. You'll be out of there soon enough. We'll all be "outta here" soon enough.

Anyway, others of us are not so Zen. We get frustrated and make ourselves miserable; we rush and so we forget things; we get anxious and frantic and fumbly so we drop things. We try to extract revenge on obstinate inanimate objects or, even worse, find culpable humans to blame when things go wrong. We rage and fume and fret and worry, which doesn't get us through our transitions any faster or more happily. Yet to change our approach? That would mean effort!

Perhaps some day I'll join the Stress-Free Healthy Balanced Productive People Crowd, and life will seem like it's all Doing! and not so much the Getting Ready and Waiting and Cleaning Up!




But then it just wouldn't be Cranky Fitness, would it?

How about you folks, are you all Prepared and Zen, or do you struggle with all the extra crap that gets in the way of Doing?


*Like many health and personal development bloggers, I often invoke "Zen" principles without having any idea what Zen is about, liking the sound of it but being too lazy to educate myself. Actual Zen people--feel free to make tsking noises, if you Zen folk are allowed to do things like that.

[And yes, this is another re-run, but I will be back really soon with brand new stuff!]

It's Check-In Time!

Remember the Cranky Fitness big-ass Fall Giveaway? Well, it requires comments on two posts over at our Product Page in order to officially enter the contest. We've got a bunch of great prizes from sponsors like TRX, Vitalicious, American Quilt, Green Mountain Spa and lots of others. So this is to announce that, if all goes right with Blogger's pre-publishing feature, the second post should be up this morning and you have until midnight, PST, Wednesday November 4th to leave your comments.

And if you missed the first giveaway post, it's not too late to enter! But please read the instructions about how to comment, as there are specific requirements.

I'm writing this ahead of time, as it looks likely I will be on the road, heading home when this post appears and will probably not have internet. So if something goes wrong and there is no second post over at the giveaway page? Don't worry, I'll give everyone another shot when I get back!

And don't forget to stay tuned for announcement of the winners!