Social Workout

SW-e-AT

Food-Ex Pairing Columbus Day Edition: Visionary Kale

Happy semi-holiday, and apologies for our belated SW-e-AT posting this morning. Normal operating hours jumbled with holiday, but not so jumbled there isn't kale to eat and your EYES to exercise! 

As usual, our dear friends at thekitchn.com have duly prepared a summary of Five Ways to Eat Kale: "Kale is not sexy; it's not the artichoke or leek of the vegetable world," they write. BUT, "Kale is one of our all-time favorite vegetables...packed full of goodness." Amen.

Yes, eyes and exercise.... Long ago, while staying in a friends apartment in a foreign city, I found a small book on the shelf of the guest bedroom. It was an extraordinary story or a man who had fixed is own poor vision by exercising his eyes. Don't be fooled by the eye doctors who simply want to increase your prescritpion, he beseeched. I didn't know what to make if it, and I've never verified the science, but I found his arguments compelling. Lo and behold, a search or two on the Internets reveals more than one web site dedicated to the exercising of the eye. We leave it to your discretion....

Today is Columbus day. A day to celebrate visionaries and telescopes. Eat your kale and look sharp. 

sipping coffee and checking off feats

I made it! A week without sugar, caffeine, soda, booze, tea. And now I am sipping coffee (good coffee!) and nibbling on some dark chocolate so that I can add one more SW-e-AT challenge to my list.

SW-e-AT 2 - Dark Chocolate Biceps

Come hell or high water, I was going to do today's SW-e-AT just to eat some chocolate. 2x20 bicep curls and outer bicep curls. Best. Chocolate. Ever.

update

Yep, definitely had more dark chocolate. Two squares of a bar of pure dark chocolate. Then I made black bean brownies. Not dark chocolate, but certainly chocolate-filled. Thanks, socialworkout, for the chocolate-filled Friday...

Day 9 - Super Salad Time!

OH I love the boy's super salad. It just makes me feel so healthy. I'm not even sure I know everything that's in it but it has something like the following: peas, sweetcorn, edamame beans, chick peas, mushrooms, kidney beans, spinach, broccoli, carrots, celery, green beans - all covered in soy sauce and garlic and other mysterious yummies and warmed through in a big pot til it's all almost soft.

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Motivation will hopefully spread like a virus through my life

I'm the sort of Social Workout reader who reads whatever's up on the page and clicks off to go about the rest of her day. But yesterday I think I read every damn line on the site and wrote more in my comments than anywhere else. Which is a problem when you're a writer whose job it is to type for something other than a workout blog.

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SW-e-AT

Had to do some bicep curls to get the chocolate!

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speedwork

I think I've said this once before recently, but I don't do much speedwork. My short runs are 4 or 5 miles, and I'm just not at the point yet where I can run 5 miles really fast -- I tend to chill around a 9:20 mile for most of my runs.

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SW-e-AT #2

I was happy to see green tea in yesterday's food-exercise pairing, because it's something I already have stashed in my cupboards. I contently settled down to watch Project Runway with a large mug of green tea and did 3 sets of 12 adductor-focused leg lifts (the kind described in the post) on the commercial breaks.

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why I keep fiction for reference

It was the last day of my 17 year-old cat's life. We were together 14 of those years, my longest relationship this side of nuclear family and family-like friends. In a twist from my own personal conviction to be cremated, we brought him home and I spent a couple of hours digging through roots and clay to make a burial spot. A doleful, cathartic workout.