Mina Marie

This week has been significant to me. I went to see the herbalist that I mentioned in the last weighwatchers post and a lot changed for me. The very talented Neil McNulty spent a total of three hours with me, and I can honestly say that this moved me a lot more than I thought it would.

To the amount of training I was doing he asked me 'how is it logic that when you're doing something that's not working for your body, you try to do MORE of it?' He also announced after a study of my eye that my body was close to exhaustion, so much in fact that he was surprised I hadn't hit the wall yet. So his first bid to me was to reduce my amount of training.

He also told me that my body (all of our bodies) knows what it's doing, it's been developed through thousands of years so it knows what it needs and what it doesn't. So the second bid was to listen to my body, if I craved something, I should get it, if I was tired I should rest and if I didn't like something there was no need to push it. He wasn't surprised at all after mentioning a few vegetables I should stay away from, that I didn't like any of them. I sheepishly had to ask 'so when my body is craving bottles of coke and bags of crisps, does that mean I should obey at any cause?' And was fairly quickly told: That's your head, not your body :P

There was a lot more said and done, obviously since it ran over three hours, but for me, the rest of what was said are personal matters that I don't feel like sharing with just anyone. But I will say this, it is amazing how someone can look, feel and read your body and instantly know a great deal about you and your person. And Neil, definetly saw a lot more than what he could tell from the words coming out of my mouth.

At the end if it all, I had a book, two bottles of herbal tinctures and clear instructions to how I was to do my homework to get on my bodies good side again.


Anyways, back to business, here's this weeks nutrition rating:



Comment: I've naturally come to between 1600-1800 kcal a day this week, which is weird considering I haven't gone for the healthiest options every day, but overall that's a good number considering I've followed Neil's teachings, if I'm hungry I should eat etc :) I've actually even started to crave salads and such, which believe you me is a very new thing for me :P

This weeks fitness rating:



Comment: I have, after herbalist orders, not as many hours clocked as last week, but the exercise I have done has been hard and effective so I'm still giving my self four stars :)

Monday:        1 hour. Pole Fitness
Tuesday:       2 hours. 90 minutes fast walking and 30 minutes PowerPlate strength exercise.
Wednesday:  45 min. Cycling/X-trainer
Saturday:      2 hours. 90 minutes fast walking and 30 minutes PowerPlate strength exercise.
Sunday:        30 minutes of swimming

Total: 6 hours and 15 minutes

I've always found the subject of reading thoughts very interesting, I found a book this summer that teaches you at least the basic principles behind thought reading, which is basically reading body language and creating whats called rapport with the other person so that you can lead them into thinking what you want, and thereby 'read' it very easily ;)

As the Secret and many of the other law of attraction books teaches us, it's been proven in metaphysics that thoughts have actual frequencies that create an energy field around you, in other words, your own little universe, or perhaps even karma if you will.

Today though, I read in the news that scientist have been able to communicate with a man who have been diagnosed braindead, using thought frequencies! I find this absolutely amazing, and even though I know there is robots and similar things that can be controlled by active thinking, the fact that this man was diagnosed braindead  just makes this revolutionary. And not to mention, this raises a very ethical question of wheter or not the practise of 'pulling the plug' on braindead pasients, both to harvest organs and to spare the families of false hope, should be seriously reconsidered.

To read about this in Norwegian click here

To read about this in English click here

The article was orginally published by the New England Journal of Medicine

I found a site the other day that had loads of practical things for the house designed with a twist of humour! In other words, my kinda nick nack! The site is called Monkey-Business and here's a taste of what you can spice up your home with:


Wine Bottle Holder



Yellow Submarine Tea maker



Crime Scene Pot-holders



Arrow book support



Hobo Candle light holder

I've made a deal with a friend of mine, Siv-Terese, that every Monday from this week on we will create a blog post about how good or bad we've been with regards to food and fitness the last week. This so that every time temptation comes along, we know that someone else will be seing it on the next post...So no lies allowed either! To me Siv looks fit as a fiddle, so why she is doing this beats me, I'm just glad to have someone watching :P I'm cheating by creating this on a Sunday instead this time because it's my first day of college tomorrow with meetings, telephone interviews and class followed by Pole Fitness so it will be busy!



This weeks nutrition rating:



Comment:
I have not been eating three proper meals a day this week, and not fiver smaller ones either. I have not been good with staying away from the sweets (feeling sorry for myself for having to work on my thesis) and the meals I've actually eaten have not all been healthy. The only reason I get TWO stars instead of one is that I have taken my supplements every day and drank at least 1.4 liters of water every day (even though that should be 2 L now that I'm doing so much exercise).


This weeks fitness rating:



Comment:
I've been good with the training this week. I don't get the fifth star because I was too comatosed from London to attend my Pole Fitness class on Monday, and because I had no strength to push myself in the session I had on Sunday. This is this weeks fitness:

Tuesday:  2 hours. 90 minutes fast walking and 30 minutes PowerPlate strength exercise.
Thursday: 2 hours. 90 minutes fast walking and 30 minutes PowerPlate strength exercise.
Friday:      40 minutes on the cross trainer (ellipse maskin på norsk) with intervals of 10 mins with 2
                 mins between them.  20 minutes of stretching after.
Saturday:  2 hours. 90 minutes fast walking and 30 minutes PowerPlate strength exercise.
Sunday:    40 minutes on the cross trainer. No chance in hell for intervalls today, but even speed and
                 intensity.  20 minutes of stretching after.

Total: 8 hours

Results:

None visible, but while writing this it does feel like my arm muscles are going to fall off as hard shells on the ground, so it did some good. I'm so swollen now because of the idiotic hormones that take control of my body three weeks of the month (and the stuffing my mouth with crap probably doesn't help either :P), but that will be addressed next week (hopefully) by a trained herbalist. And this is NOT something that's all in my head; a little old lady approached my on the street while I was walking home from the gym, touched my belly and stated that it was so right of a woman in MY CONDITION to stay fit for as long as possible.......

Over the course of studying design I've come across a lot of cool, weird, uncomfortable, unique and pretty designs. Here are a few of the ones I personally would like to have myself one day:



Cocoon Bath & Shower designed by Arina Komorova



Stingray chair designed by Thomas Pedersen



Boboli table by Rodolfo Dordoni



Fil de Fer light by Catellani & Smith



Date chair by Stokke



Nirvana Daybed by TGI Furniture

For the past year I've been using PowerPlate as my strength training. A lot of you have asked me what is and does it work, so I thought I'd dedicate a post to it.



Power Plate is a fitness machine that uses the principles of Acceleration Training to stimulate the body's natural response to vibration. It's a vibrating plate you do your normal push ups, sit ups,  lunches etc on, that makes your muscles contract up to 50 times per second! This is what makes it around 5 times as efficient as conventional strength training. This is also the reason why you can get results by using it as little as 15 min 3 times per week. The technology behind it was originally designed to help prevent muscle loss for astronauts on their long journeys in space!



I used to do conventional strength training for about an hour and a half, three times per week, and was skeptical towards it when I first saw the infomercial on it. BodySmart in Ireland offers free trial sessions so I thought I'd give it a go anyway, and after a session of only half an hour I couldn't walk, lift or laugh for days! That half hour equaled what had taken me three times the time to do before. Even though the exercises only last for 30, 45 or 60 seconds each, they feel excruciatingly heavy every time (the trainers control how strong the vibrations are after considering what shape you're in) and leaves me exhausted for the walk home every time! And the best part of it all? After all that hard work, you get a vibrating muscle massage at the end of it! :)



In Ireland BodySmart would be your best place to do it, in Norway the only place I've found that have it so far are PilatesPilotene in Oslo. You can go to PowerPlate's website for more information on it.

And here's a taste of why!

Finally I've got access here again! Now that I can use this from home I wonder is me finishing my thesis in danger....:P

Anyway's let's start with an interesting gadget I came across today. It's almost like your  (+ one)  little personal fort that can be used anywhere, anytime. Procure public intimacy in a flash with "Veasyble" - a collapsible 'shell of solitude' made from paper and polyethylene fabric. All I know is if I had someone to get public indecent with, this would be a fun way of doing it :D