Wellness #42 Staying Well (?)

Eating the right foods and exercising faithfully can go a long way to ensure a happy and healthy life. There are also many things that go on in your daily life that you have no control over and you or someone in your family will have dental problems, will get sick or hurt in some way. One of the great things about the Internet is the ability to retrieve current and somewhat personalized medical information . Both of my parents are having some major health issues right now and I am able to research some of their symptoms. I did not find "symptom checker" on the Mayo Clinic web site very helpful to me. A medical web site I do like is Wellness Resource, It explains medical conditions and treatments to me in simple terms that I can understand. The Mayo Clinic Cancer. Org. gave and very good diagnosis explanation, and treatment plans.
The local medline plus was an interesting site and one that I have never explored.
I picked a topic on denatl care and dental resources, in Fort Bend County. I found a lot of information on dental health care but I was hoping to find a source to be included in an independent dental study, or something of that nature. What I found was a school in Warten that you could have dental work done at a reduced cost. When it comes to my dental health I am wishing for a set miracle teeth, and not a visit from the tooth fairy.

Wellness # 41 - Going Green Part 1

CARBON FOOTPRINT: I have thought that I have been doing my part in trying to live a greener life, but after taking a carbon footprint survey, I found I am not doing as much as I should.
The average family carbon footprint rating was 9.44 co2 a yr, and mine was 15.0. The interesting thing I found out is that I am living in too big of a house. My five bedroom house is too big for just 2 people. (I did not add my five cats as household members.) My home rated a 9.9. driving rated a - 3.4, and flying was only 1.8.

EATING GREEN: It is amazing the amount of pesticides used on our foods, and how much of it remains even after a thorough washing. The highest amount of pesticide residue is on peaches, apples, bell peppers, & celery. Imported grapes were rated high, domestic grapes were low on the list. I am thinking now instead of eating grapes out of hand I will just drink them (think wine)

LOCAL FARMERS MARKET: The farmers market at La Centera, is a joke. I live close enough to La Centera that I can walk there. This I thought this farmers market would be a good thing. Get some exercise, reduce driving, and buy organic produce. Ha! Every time I go I am always disappointed. I look forward to walking there, thinking I am going to get some great things, then leave empty handed. It would be nice if someone actually sold some produce, I realize this is Houston and not the produce growing fields like California, but still we do have some things that do grow here. All I have ever seen is way overpriced eggs, and organic dried meat. There are lots of vendors selling lots of other items, like artwork, oil, soap, candles to name a few. Not what I would call a farmers market. Still it's a nice morning walk, and I can keep hoping someday there will be vegetables for sale.

Wellness # 40 FITNESS

Exercise is something I need to do. I have to do. Sometimes I get lazy, or life gets too busy and I skip exercising. I try not to get to far off track for very long, because the longer I skip exercising the harder it is to get motivated again. I felt I really needed an exercise tune-up and on the Exercise Prescription site I found some helpful tips for my day to day workouts. I find that I do the same type of exercise routine over and over again. RX has animated weight training exercise that you can watch and learn. Also I liked that you could target a specific area of your body. I like to use hand weights, and now I know I can use the hand weights every day without causing muscle fatigue or injury if I do different routines. The video made suggestions and showed proper lift technique. This video was great, almost like having a personal trainer without the fee! This site will even program you a personal workout menu. I am hoping this will motivate me to work harder.

Now the diet part of the wellness module was a very had lessonto do. This required me to be honest about my health, weight and eating habits. I looked at the fitness calculator and checked my BMI which was good 18.9. But other areas not so good, and I am not willing to share those statistics. Basically I eat too many carbs and too little protein. I have learned if you want to build muscle mass and endurance plus have more energy I need to add more protein in my diet. I took the age questionaire and the results said I could live to the age of 93.4 years. My health age was 43.2. Oh boy! Now I just have remember to look both ways when I am out running the streets!

Wellness # 39 Nutrition

I also believe everyone WOULD like to eat healthier, but for the most part we don't. Most of the time we make our food choices on whatever easiest,fastest, cheapest and tastiest. I found that my most favorite thing to eat, pretzels, is not a very wise food choice. Most pretzels are fat free, and that's a plus, but they are very high in sodium, and too many carbs. I still like pretzels and eat just as many as before but now I feel guilty when I eat them.
I enjoyed the Sparkpeople site. I posted two recipes, and toyed with making them more nutritious. One fun thing I found if you increase the number of servings per recipe, you decrease the amount of calories per serving. Duh. I would still probably east just as much it only looks better. I also found a lot of recipes others have posted that I would like to try. I have added those to my on line recipe file. There was a lot of good information on the spark people site and I find that I go to that site when I am at home on the Internet.

Week #30 Spring cleaning

Don't have anything to clean out on the S drive. I know how to place a file on the S drive so didn't practice that. Cleaned out the extra stuff that wasn't being used on P drive. Things I used several years ago thatwere still there and getting dusty...got rid of those documents! The few photos I had on the P drive that I used for IHCPL got moved to flickr. Also went and cleaned out the sent mail on my email, and that cleaned up a lot of space. Yeah! Spring cleaning sure feels good!

Week #29 email, moving forward

This exercise is a continuation of the previous week. On last weeks lesson I focused on finding order between my work and personal email, and using an outside source to get my personal life in better order. So this week I created additional folders in my work email. Things I might want to save and refer to at a later date.
Such as some of the weekly updates about ill procedures. I also have a folder for all correspondence from Coxnet. From time to time I need to go and clean out those folders too, and this exercise has taught me a little about orgainizing skills

Week #28 TA DA! getting organized, maybe...

After spending some time reading about getting things done I realize I have a lot to learn about getting all my "ducks in a row" An interesting thought about removing stuff from your head and parking those thoughts somewhere more concrete and readily assesable. There are far better ways to keep lists than writing stuff down on a post it note and then forgetting where you put it. First thing I learned by reading GTD was HOW to get my work and personal information in order.
First I separated my work email from my personal email. I canceled all junk email by unscribing to as many as I could, and what ones I wanted to keep changed it to my personal email. I signed up for TA Da, thought I could find a use for organizing lists. With this wedding coming up there is a great many things to keep track of, like all the many many things we have to buy and what we have already bought, cost of things, guests and the like. So now I can add that to my Tada list and keep track and I can also set it up so that anyone can add to our wedding lists. Pretty cool.
So I think I am on my way to good organizing!