Exercise Surprise

Earlier this year I posted some thoughts about my world view of health and fitness.
As a quick summary I proposed;

• Health is about what you eat, the quality of the fuel you put in the engine.
• Fitness is about the kind of exercise you do, how efficiently your engine uses the fuel.

My suggestion was you can be fit but not healthy and vice versa. If you exercise but still eat stupid, its not going to do you any good. Neither is eating well but never giving your body a chance to use all its muscle groups.

Well I found an article on line that has an interesting view about exercise here. Have a read and let me know what you think?
For myself I suggest it raises a good point, people have different metabolisms that respond to different stimuli. I also suggest that people looking to change their lifestyle should also do some investigation as to how their body responds and work around that.
I would also suggest that people need to stop concentrating on weight loss and focus more on the body shape (in my opinion BMI scales are totally bogus, eg a Mr Universe contender is considered obese by the BMI scale). If you're flabby, diet and exercise will give you muscle tone, more energy and better posture, but muscle mass IS heavier than fat - so your weight probably won't improve, even though you'll look better and feel better.

I try and eat well whenever I can, I also try and exercise regularly. What I can say is I don't waste my time with scales. I focus on how I'm feeling and whether or not I'm having fun!

What I did in Beechworth

This last week gone has been something a wash for me. Have you ever seen the movie 'My blue heaven' (Steve Martin and Rik Moranis). For my money the moral there is we all need a friend who can help us relax and loosen up some and possibly get us into trouble. You know the lovable trouble maker.
Well my own personal Mephistopheles rode into town last week, I love him like a brother - but he has got me to do more wild arse shit than I care to recount out here in the court of public opinion. So we hook up on a Monday night for dinner and a couple of beers.
Then a game or two of pool.
Then it was $10 of coins into the jukebox for a Motely Crue medley and I was so drunk I had to leave my truck in town and walk an hour and half home which I reached by 2am.
Needless to say I was not firing on all cylinders come Tuesday, thank goodness I had a late meeting near my apartment the next day.

So it got me thinking about growing up and having fun. My thoughts coalesced Tuesday night and I concluded I was a total pussy for being an old stick in the mud and taking so long to recover from a night out on the town.
So I picked up the phone and took another buddy of mine up on an offer to join a bike wine tasting tour this weekend just gone.
Helped there were 4 single nurses coming up from Melbourne.

I tell you what Bubba it was some good fun. The location for the tour was a little country town in Victoria called Beechworth, that had as a claim to fame among other things a cell that once held Ned Kelly!
He had gone by the time we arrived, I checked.

Everybody hooked up a local pub that had a tiny pool table in a confined space. I was hurting some from the acupuncture the day before (all to be revealed in a seperate blog) so I was barely drinking anything but lemonade to the complete disgust of my cohorts. On the plus side I was coherent enough to talk to 4 cute nurses, so swings and round abouts.
If you've heard of the Hash House Harriers, you may know that they also do Bike Hash's and this is what the events for the weekend were. Things kicked off around 10am on the Saturday we only rode about 20 km's all up, but we did visit 3 vineyards and 2 breweries.

The day was fantastic, great weather, great company and the ride was very pleasant and broken into easy stages. The ride was graded to allow people to take a hard route should they wish or go easy and enjoy the sights of Beechworth.
Things that stand out in my mind was the Bocce tournament we spontaenously organised during the lunch break. Me and some buddies kicked things off and by the end we had 20 people playing along with us! Everyone was very friendly and welcoming and I think that makes such a positive difference to an outing.
Even though the theme of day was to drink and ride, I piked after the last stop and had a cup of tea with 4 fantastic nurses. I have to tell one thing I find really sexy in a lady is her ability to hold up her end of a conversation. Must be a Gemini thing, but there a lot of girls in Canberra who have trouble with that particular social skill.
I suggest someone with good conversation skills also has a positive social personality, just a thought...

Later that night was footy on the telly, great wine, then off to another pub for disco dancing, getting my arse kicked on a pool table by a couple of good old boys who KNEW there was a lean on the table :)
I had a great time and wasn't too drunk to walk back my hotel and get a good nights sleep.

Sunday morning was a slow recovery day, no hurry to go anywhere. We all reconnected and had brunch on the balcony of a pub Ned Kelly and the Kelly gang once had a brawl in. They must have been sleeping by the time we got there.

So I guess by know your wondering - how did it go with the nurses? Well I don't like to kiss and tell, but I think I have a crush on one very special person in particular.
Lets see where things go! It should be a lot fun finding out!!

Looks familiar

Sometimes it is fun to get another persons perspective on a city.
I know I have fun writing about it. So do the good chaps at The Economist!
Click here for Wellington

Couldn't get the link for Canberra to work...

Yoga

I've been giving the Yoga classes at my gym a go, and I have to tell you they are awesome!!
Originally I figured, why not. Never done yoga before, could be fun, lets see what happens.
Weel I have to tell you, its pretty hard core.
As our instructor says at the start of the class, 'This is not relaxation yoga, you are going to hurt.'

I appreciate his openess. That said though, its only been my abs that have been hurting. The kind of yoga we're doing focuses on the abs and lower back muscles as the core group (which is great because those are the ones my chair bound day job mess up the most easily).
Definately getting flexible though (could come in handy later...) can scratch between my shoulder blades with little or no effort now!

So if you have the chance to try yoga, my advice is give it a go!