a peek inside the fishbowl

… and you will be left sockless.

This is a placeholder post for an upcoming Canada-wide giveaway I hope to post by the end of the day. And there will be more coming too. Woot! Stay tuned!

As some of you know, the 100 Club is a challenge I created for myself in order to help me bust out of seasonal blues that seem to be getting worse as I get older.

Sidebar: I caught the end of a really interesting interview with an expert on Seasonal Affective Disorder today. Apparently there’s a tiny part of us that still wants to hibernate when the weather turns. Isn’t that interesting? This results in food cravings and sleepy behaviour. That’s me, TO A TEE this time of year… a gruff n’ grumpy ol’ mama bear who just wants to eat chips and hunker down in a cozy cave somewhere and sleep until springtime.

There are a bunch of people out there who’ve joined the 100 Club too (yay!), and a few of us are jotting our names down in a Google Calendar when we accomplish our tasks. And those tasks are different for everyone.

I pledged to do the following things every day for the next 100 days, and so far it’s going really well. I’m:

• getting a 30-minute dose of light using my Litebook
• taking my Vitamin D
• eating breakfast before 9:00 a.m. (this staves off evening cravings)
• doing 100 reps of some easy exercises: 40 jumping jacks, 30 crunches, 20 squats, 10 push-ups
• drinking one extra glass of water* plus
• a cup of green tea

* Someone told me that drinking extra water will ruin my kidneys because it will force them to work overtime. This is simply not true. I asked our pediatrician about it. He said that he thought that everyone is probably a little dehydrated and could use more liquids. And by the way, it’s 8-10 servings of liquid we need, not water, and that includes coffee and tea and milk and juice. So I’m sticking with that.

The secret to success (at least for me) is to keep things super easy. I knew that if I promised to take an hour-long walk after dinner every night or do yoga very morning I would just be setting myself up for failure. I’m just not able to make that kind of commitment.

The priority things on that list – the ones I can’t miss – are the S.A.D. light, the vitamin D and the exercises. I have learned a few things about myself when it comes to doing the excercises:

1. 1) I need to do them in the morning. If I don’t, I’m likely to put it off until the evening, at which point I am likely to forget.
2. 2) Those teeny little exercises left me out of breath at first but they after a few days they got easier. And once I’m doing them I tend to throw in a few extras: more jumping jacks and pushups, a plank, some stretches, and an arm/leg raising move that fitness trainer Sarah Zahab (I wrote about her here) showed me.
3. 3) I hate squats. Loathe them. And I have to give myself a pep talk EVERY DAY. But I do it. Because muscles are good things to have.

Being mindful is a big part of this equation, and as my energy increases I realize I’m making smaller changes elsewhere because the 100 Club is always in the back of my mind. I am happy to park the car farther away from the grocery store entrance and enjoy the fresh air on my walk in to the store, I’m walking taller, and am motivated to do things I may not have taken on had I not had the energy. For example, on Saturday morning I found myself cooking up a stew for dinner on Sunday night. I can’t remember the last time I’ve done that.

Anyway, yes. I’m only about two weeks into it and am feeling pretty good so far. Here’s to another 184 days!

Edited to add: I’d be interested to hear what you do to stay healthy this time of year. And if you’re not doing anything, why not? What’s stopping you? (Wait. I know the answer to that. I know what’s stopping you…)

Read the rest of this entry »

To commemorate this very important minute of this very important day I took a photo at exactly 11:11 a.m today. Here it is. Did you do the same? Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to see your photo!

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If you happen to be in the Westboro area of Ottawa, there will be a Remembrance Day ceremony at the Westboro Cenotaph at 2:00 p.m. today. The Cenotaph is located between Richmond Rd. and Byron on the pedestrian pathway, just west of Golden Avenue.

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Later: These were taken at the Westboro event ( click to enlarge):