Eating better?

Monday, April 30, 2018

I’m getting bored with hiking as my only form of exercise, but even though it was perfect weather for a ride, I opted for a hike with Dakota.  You see, I arrived at home with 21,000 steps already in the books from a hard day on the farm.  I knew my standard hike would put another 9,000 on that total and I liked the sound of 30,000 for the day.  Additionally, I would set a monthly record for myself that would be hard to beat and I like having tough goals.  So…out I went.

And I didn’t stop until I reached almost 36,000 for the day and 649,000 for the month.  Okay…that’s done.  Today should reach almost 80 degrees and with sun in the forecast, I’ll ride.  The Adirondacks are three weeks away and I really should find that missing bag of salt, throw it in my backpack and head to the local track to do some steps.  How to you misplace a fifty-pound bag of salt anyway?  One of the issues of my new house and no garage.

I continue to follow the Paleo Diet though I took a weekend off to have some French toast and maple syrup while camping.  I began watching ‘The Magic Pill’ on Netflix and although I am only half way through the 90-minute documentary on sensible nutrition, I can already endorse it.  Essentially, it is the Paleo diet, focusing as the Paleo does on lean meats, fruits and vegetables.  It does a nice job of explaining the Paleo theory that our body’s DNA for eating, which for 100,000 generations (not years – generations!) was all about food we ingested from our hunter/gatherer methods.  Only over the last 10,000 years have our bodies switched to highly processed, grain/legume, carbohydrate-based foods, which is at the root of so many of today’s illnesses.  Though I have not finished the program, I hope that it will spend some time on activity levels as a large part of the obesity issue throughout the world.  As much as diet, I suspect this leads in a large part to issues such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and joint issues related to being immobile.  In any event, the emphasis on the right kinds of fats and the elimination of boxed carbohydrates is fascinating.
Hike: One hours and 30 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 70 - 90 bpm.
Calories Burned:  525.
Bonus: 36,000 steps.