Not-so-Silent Retreat: The Hikes

We went on one or two "hikes" every day. Real hikers would perhaps scoff - we didn't rack up much mileage. But the trails were rocky, dusty, vertical, and sometimes directly through streams. I thought it was a great balance of activity and chilling. I need both.

The first afternoon, we took a stroll through a canyon where the highlight was a chance to climb on a rock wall above a waterfall. It was also my first exposure to how life is experienced when social media is not just for fun, but how one earns a living. Our professional photographer - and all of us - had to capture all kinds of moments to be used in posts that included tags for various sponsors. This was not annoying, just different. I'm getting more used to the fact that without pics it didn't happen, but in this case, it was not solely for fun - but it was always fun.  When we got to the rock climbing part, not everyone went up the wall, but I did. The difficulty was minimal, though as always the challenge is some transition in balance from using my arms to relying on my legs to hold me up.

The stream was mostly dry

I did that too

Social media life

The next day was a much more challenging slot canyon with a much taller waterfall.  It was truly scary, but we all did the climb at the end. First, however, we ascended a canyon with a very cold stream running through it, often forced to walk through the water directly. We had loaner hiking boots from one of the sponsors, Merrell. We also had hiking sticks (like ski poles) which I used for the first time. I have been reluctant to use poles because I think they look nerdy. But, balancing on rocks in a swiftly moving stream, I welcomed the extra help in balancing. I also found them useful for taking pressure off my knee when going up or down big steps.

The path is only through the water

Trying to improve my selfie technique - remember to smile!

Bits of sunlight changed the temperature

Gaining confidence

Slow shutter speed

Steep sides

Claiming it as my own

Yes, we did a bra shot

After chilling back at the house for some hours, we headed out to a place with big rocks for yoga at sunset. No pictures of the actual yoga, as I was doing it. Just the big rocks and big sky.

The next morning was literally up well before dawn to go into Zion National Park, climbing in the dark to a scenic overlook to watch the sun rise. This was absolutely the most amazing time. We had the spot mostly to ourselves, because of being early birds. There was a huge backup to get into the park we saw on our way out.

Not quite light

I could actually see the line of the sun move on the hills

Feeling on top of the world

This was pretty high up

The light is about to come

Everything is fabulous

More light

More yoga was done

Great spot for a pose - always paying attention

After dawn, we made one other stop in Zion to see some petroglyphs.

That evening, post chilling and before dinner, we did a trail run just a couple of miles from the house. My knee didn't actually let me run for more than five minutes. (I've got to get that fixed.)  Mirna the ultra-runner gave us tips and coaching. Since I didn't run much, I also spent time admiring the plants.

Trail

There was a very steep hill at the end

Datura

The last full day was extraordinary in a different way. We were going up a very steep canyon. It involved giant steps up rocks, requiring hands for me, and my knee simply couldn't do it. I said I was going to turn around, but due to a slight fear of thunderstorms causing a flash flood, everyone came with me. After the shorter-than-planned hike, we drove through the home of the FLDS (the splinter group of polygamists and pedophiles who think the LDS, Mormons, are not conservative enough. Since a series of arrests and trials, the world has come to this place, and it is slowly opening to the world. We did not actually see many people, perhaps because it was Sunday, perhaps because it was hot.

Enjoying the moment

A random arch

Apparently one is required to strike this pose when wearing this shirt

Perhaps the most brilliant day

 We headed in the cars towards a scenic overlook that required less climbing and that would be above any floods. But we stopped before reaching the spot, because the road was rough and it appeared there was a serious rescue of a mountain biker underway, involving many high speed vehicles. This random desert moment proved surprisingly emotional.

This patch of desert is the back door to Zion

We felt the end of our time coming soon

Community

Better selfie?

The final morning, the clouds and the rain were coming. We took a walk through cinders up the side of an ancient volcano. More yoga was done. Then were were done.

Early

Cholla cactus

Bye

Not-So-Silent Retreat, Part 1

I went off to a five day retreat in Utah. Immediately after signing up in July, I had cold feet. What did I know about this? Not much. A woman I read about in Runner's World, Mirna Valerio, and then followed on Instagram, and then joined her Facebook group, was the sponsor. But she wasn't the organizer. That was someone I'd never heard of. In early September, I got an email saying fewer people signed up than they hoped, there would only be three of us, but it would be fun and we should come anyway.

I hesitated a long time, before finally saying I'd come. I didn't want to go off with a strangers I'd have to talk to. The idea with the big group was that I'd be able to be lost in the crowd. With fewer, I might actually have to interact. But I really wanted to get away from work, and the thought of the desert was more than a little attractive after all the rain we've had. So I bought my airplane ticket and off I went.

I knew almost nothing about what was going to happen. I didn't really know where were staying. I had never met nor read much about the organizers, and certainly had no details about the other guests. I did have a cell phone number, an email address, an emailed shuttle ticket from Las Vegas airport to St. George Utah, and a promise that once I got to St. George, I would not need to do a thing for the rest of the week.

It was fabulous. The organizer, Shanti Hodges, had just bought a house in Utah, and her in-laws who live in Alaska had bought another house a couple of doors down. She and her husband were just starting a business of retreats and guiding, using their two new houses which would be Airbnbs between retreats and during trips. Between Shonti and Mirna, it was the perfect complete get-away from my current life.

Mirna is a writer, a professional ultra-runner, and a motivational speaker. Shonti is a writer with twenty years in the outdoor industry, the founder and head of a large non-profit hiking group, and compulsive community-builder. The other women on the retreat included a health care professional, a tech industry marketer, and a school counselor turned yoga instructor and closet organizer. Joining us for additional activities were a yoga instructor who is learning to code, a professional photographer, a nurse who is a major instagram hero, and a foot masseuse/reflexologist. We hiked, we ate, we hiked, we did yoga, we hiked, we had foot massages, we hiked, we sat around and talked, we ran, and we hiked. We took pictures. Lots of pictures. We checked in on our kids. With women coming and going and bonding, there was chatter, and jokes, and tears. We posted on social media, we had clinics in how to jazz up your instagram stories, we went out of cell coverage and took more pictures to share later. There was even silence, sometimes, as we soaked in the natural spirituality prompted by the desert landscapes.

More to come.

It Turns Out I Need Rules

My long struggle for mindful eating resulting in gaining a significant amount of weight!  Eating mindfully cannot mean eating impulsively. I need rules and planning or else the pounds pack on.

And yes, I care about those pounds packing on. I feel worse, I feel fat, my clothes don't fit, my knees and back go out. And yes, I can see it in the mirror or in photos.

So I'm back on a conscious plan to lose weight. This means a restricted set of food choices and lots of planning. My experiment with being an omnivore has not gone well. It's so much easier to eat what most of America eats, building a meal on bread, potatoes, pasta, or rice. Well, that really doesn't work well for me. I tried adding beans and more starchy vegetables such as sweet potatoes and winter squash into the mix, and that hasn't worked out so well either. The food tastes great! It's very filling. But, I'm hungry again too soon, and portion control goes out the window.

So back to basics on my menus. At least two meals a day have to be built around leafy greens, preferably all three. Meat in decent but not obscene portions (I just read - from Jane Brody, of all people - that older adults need much more protein than younger ones.) Cooking at home, and limited eating out.  This is the basics of Atkins. What I have found is when I actually do this, my appetite falls and so it becomes easier to stick to the plan. Less often do I have the cravings.

So it's been about a month, and I've arrested what is actually a three-year increase in my weight, since I hit my goal weight and allowed a bounce back up.  I can do a month; I've often done a big push for about a month. Then, I fall off the wagon and bounce back up. I'm at that falling off point now.

So that's where the mindfulness and other psychologically-based strategies come in. I still need to plan, I still need to focus on veggies and I still need to eschew starches. But I can't count on the diet to prevent all cravings. I also need to avoid an emotional feeling of being deprived, of feeling I'm missing out.

Here's some of what I'm doing:
I have a late afternoon slump in energy that has led to snacking on crappy chocolate candy at work in the afternoons. Physical problem: very real drop in energy, sometimes (but not always) genuinely hungry too. The mindful techniques I've learned include really checking in with my body to see if I'm hungry. Further, on days in the past when I've given in to the craving, staying in touch to find out, "what am I actually getting from this?". When I eat a bunch of candy, often it feels bad. However, when I eat one or two or three pieces, sometimes it just feels good- gives me energy. There is remorse, but no bodily bad feeling. After struggling with this for months, what has worked for the last couple of months are two new strategies: I bought a small Keurig coffeemaker for my office, and I'm careful to bring a really good, but appropriate, snack. I showed off a wide variety of snacks in a previous post, but that was when I was more omnivorous than I am now.  Now, it's usually macademia nuts, and sometimes guacamole. I've found that caffeine and fat and salt work. Cheese would also work, I bet.

In the month I've been back focused on actually dropping weight, I've had a few social engagements. I've been able to bend my rules, without throwing them completely out the window. I'm not one for more than one or two drinks, ever. So that's fine. When there is a dessert I want, I have some of it. Based on results so far, this limited indulgence has not derailed the actual weight loss.

Eight Dove squares last night

But last night was a problem. With all hatches battened down against a steady deluge, I was restless, bored, under exercised, and jazzed from reading a too exciting book too late into the night. I keep Dove chocolates in my refrigerator, and often have had one in the evening after supper. Sometimes, more than one, and that is a very slippery slope. I can't allow auto-pilot to just munch. I have to go get them one at a time, and ask myself, feel in my gut, each time: do I really want this? As I stayed awake to make sure our hero was going to come out ok, I kept making trips to the fridge and coming back with another Dove square. For accountability, I piled up all the wrappers. There were way too many this morning. I did in fact feel bad in my body before I went to bed - I knew I had messed up. But I was in the "I just don't care" mode. Sigh. What has gotten me in the past is sheer exhaustion, from thinking about this all the time.

I feel like I'm on the right track, but for how long? I beginning to think I'll never hit a weight balance where I can eat the diet I think is normally healthy, whole grains and beans and plenty of fruit as a regular part of my diet, unless I'm willing to weigh a lot more than I do now. I see lots of leafy greens in my future. Good thing I love salads.

Don't be a Cashew

I'm really obsessed with posture these days. I'm doing exercises to find and strengthen my neutral spine position. I walk, I sit, I ride my scooter, all with a mantra of "shoulders back and down, abs tight, chest proud". This is what I've learned from Back Forever, reinforced at the gym, and validated by how I feel as I do it. I learned this the first time I went through physical therapy for my back, more than a dozen years ago, and my sole yoga class had a session on mountain pose, with subtle points about my shoulders, my chest, my thighs, the crown of my head and my chin. A running clinic I took reinforced the posture further. Hold yourself right, and you can run all day.

Bending over is special. I heard back in February a piece on NPR about how Americans round our backs when bending over to the ground. Most other cultures around the world bend at the hips (hip hinge) and make their spine parallel to the ground, flat like a table. But, says the piece, Americans look like cashews when we bend over.  (My horrible back spasm in March happened when I bent over to tie my shoe. I'm certain I was a cashew then.)

"Shoulders back and down, hinge at the hips, brace that core..." was my mantra while working in the yard today. I spent a solid three hours pulling out English ivy from an area newly fenced and to be reclaimed as garden. "Don't be a cashew, don't be a cashew" was the short-cut.  Stand up, hip hinge, bend legs into a squat, grab and pull by straightening my legs while remaining bent at the hips but straight at the waist. Similar to some moves I do at the gym.

Now, the back clearly has been working hard today, but it's not terrible. I do my back exercises every single morning, just as Kim's friend Chris says to do, after the first cup of coffee but before the second. It starts with neutral spine march, not a lot of exhertion, but training my body to keep that core straight. Seven exercises in total, ten to twelve minutes depending on the reps. It's given me the strength to be able to bend over and stand up while pulling for three hours straight! 

Energy

Where does it come from? Where does it go?

It seems like I'm feeling more energy these past few weeks than in roughly forever. Why? What is the secret password that uncorked the bottle?

Does energy come from taking pills? Does it come from eating right? It takes energy to take pills, and even more to eat right. So which comes first? Enough energy comes from no-where as a gift, just enough to allow me to set things on a course that will start to generate energy?

Things I am doing that are helping grow the energy reserves:

• Taking vitamins (B12 and D3)
• Taking anti-inflammatory (celebrex)
• Eating right (low carb, my own cooking)
• Doing back exercises
• Going to the gym
• Meditating
• Brain training
• Sleeping lots
• Doing useful things at work
• Sailing
• Riding the Vespa
• Gardening and garden planning
• Spending more time with family

But I know I can't rise from the couch out of my funk and start doing these things all at once. So what has set off what is now seeming like a virtuous spiral?  Which of these is a cause and which a result?

Could it be the miraculous Curable app has miraculously fixed me after all? Despite my skepticism and only intermittent practice?

I'm enjoying the ride for now.

(And, of course, things don't just go one way. I had my first migraine in months this weekend, even when the pain was low it was like operating on half power. But I woke up this morning without it, and felt great!)

Snacks

I'm still trying to figure out how to stop eating cheap chocolate candy in the office every day during my afternoon slump, predictably between 3-5 pm. I am low on energy, and actually hungry in many instances. A handful of nuts doesn't do it for me, doesn't cut the cravings. So I went to check out snacks.

Whole Foods to the rescue. I went nuts in the chips aisle (see what I did there?). I got chips, and I got dips, and I got crunchy things, and I got savory things, and I got sort-of sweet things.

I'm working my way through these. The plantain chips are really good, though I'm no fan of bananas. They are very very salty, and it appears part of what I am craving at that time is salt. The crispy broad beans are also very salty and filling.

The lentil chips are highly processed food that tastes like lightly salted cardboard. I'm disappointed - I like a lot of Saffron Road products. I'm too cheap to throw them away, and they make adequate shovels for bringing tabbouleh to my mouth, so that's what's up with that.

Cashews are the carbiest of nuts, and it seems I'm also craving some starch in the late afternoon, so that is one nut I am consistently reaching for. Of course I get the roasted with salt.

I've found a series of Moroccan lentil dips sold at Whole Foods, that are fabulous with pita chips. I brought them to a potlock this past weekend. I bet they would be easy to make - sort of like the legendary Mediterranean lentil-and-feta dip my friend Liz often serves to the delight of her guests - but vegan.

These chips with dips are getting me through the afternoons, and I am finding it's good during this busy summer to have a different chip and dip combo for dinner. It's freeing, since it's usually just me, to do a quick, cold snack than to take the time to fix something and sit down and eat.  I suspect when cold weather rolls in, I'll want an actual meal again, but for now it's nice to feel like I'm eating light and not taking too much time.

Salvation Over the Internet

I'm a fan of self-help books from way back, perhaps a subject deserving of its own future post. But with the advent of the internet, now I'm a fan of self-help over the internet, a somewhat more interactive, but still private and self-motivated approach.

I recently did some housekeeping on my phone, and I realized I've got several paid subscription services I'm using, some more intermittently than others. Yes there are blogs and podcasts, but I'm talking about services, where content comes with coaching, often in the form of a moderated forum for subscribers supplemented with email personal coaching. 

I've never done therapy, only one attempt at Weight Watchers (before the internet existed), and I prefer to meditate alone. These internet services suit my introverted home focused personality.  What follows is a partial list of those services I'm using, with notes on how I found them and what I think about them.

I forget how I stumbled onto the Summer Tomato blog, but I'm a big fan of  Darya Rose's Foodist approach to eating. Being a good San Francisco-based internet entrepreneur, she has a few services available, and I've used two of them.  The first was a free, weeklong course in mindful eating, the Mindful Meal Challenge. She runs a new one every Monday. Sign up, and get an email every day with a link to a video with that day's instruction. You get admitted to a private Facebook group, where others in the challenge, and Darya, provide support and answers to questions. Really helped me get started with focus and slowing down my eating. I think it made a permanent difference in how I approach a meal. She also has cooking lessons, Foodist Kitchen. It cost $99 to get 30 days of daily emails and links, and access to another private Facebook group. Because I agree with Darya that one of the keys to eating healthfully is cooking at home from scratch, I signed up for that as well. Of course I know how to cook, but I wanted the discipline and approach of structuring cooking for a month. She is big on building habits, and paying for the course helped focus me on doing the daily work she recommended. I found I could actually make dinner on a week night - but I still don't, mostly.  I think what has stuck with me most from the course is a new (to me) approach to chopping vegetables that is much faster than what I did before-basic knife skills- by decreasing the time it becomes more approachable.

So those are courses, one and done, but with continuing access to the materials and the support groups. I have an ongoing paid subscription to a meditation app, 10% Happier, that definitely makes me happy. I came to this from the book of the same name by Dan Harris. The app has full length courses and guided meditations of various lengths and topics, and is constantly updating the material. I often go to the app for meditating, looking for guidance, rather than just doing a simple timed quiet meditation on my own. Of course, I like that the app records my meditation minutes so I have access to looking at my history. Dan Harris also has a blog, and another book, and I'm a fan of it all. I turned to their guided meditations on living with pain when my back went out, and it was so very very helpful in sorting out the actual physical pain from all the mental anguish I was having.

One of the courses in 10% Happier is on Mindful Eating, taught by Judson Brewer. I did that course, which ends with noting Brewer has his very own, longer, more expensive, app called Eat Right Now. It consists of an app and an online community, which is staffed by Brewer's grad students. The app has a number of tools to access to help manage cravings and hunger, and for 28 days daily unlocks a lesson for the day. I've signed up, and am continuing it. I've been through all the content twice. It is built on the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) approach to meditation, all about noticing what you are doing, and understanding habits. These are common themes with all that I've covered here. It is also using many concepts and approaches Brewer has successfully used in treating drug and alcohol addiction. I found the insights and approaches useful and enjoy the on-line community. I think this program is probably closest to a magic bullet in modifying how I actually think about and approach food. But being mindful requires energy, and my focus has been distracted by other, non-weight, health problems.

I bought the app Migraine Buddy to track my migraines and to try to get a handle on triggers. It is just geared to tracking that, though it also has a community, the community is not so active.

When my back was out, my blog reader turned up a post from Kim's friend Chris, the Younger Next Year guy. He has a new book coming out soon, the Younger Next Year Back Book. His post said he had teamed up with a guy who also had a web service to fix backs. Of course I checked it out.  Back Forever is a 10-week program that has daily, eventually weekly, exercise programs with a write up and really meticulously detailed videos. This gym rat, who has been having personal training for 10 years now, combined with several series of physical therapy, learned a lot in the details of how to do the fundamental core exercises. I didn't go back to my gym for nearly 3 weeks after my back went sproing, but I did do these exercises, and they are what got me up and moving. Like our friend Chris, he's all about this is forever, not just till you are back on your feet. I was totally faithful to the plan for the first three weeks, pushed on to do all ten weeks, over a longer time period, and I've just turned off my subscription but I'm still doing the exercises. I probably will use his recommended technique for standing up from lying on the floor for the rest of my life. I'll also buy the book when it is available, because, hey, I love self-help books!  So I would highly recommend the not-cheap-for-an-app service - more than $20/month - for addressing back issues.

So I have migraines and back troubles and knee problems (not to mention the month of a sinus infection I may have finally gotten over) and Facebook pushes an ad on me about fixing chronic pain. I clicked through, read the blurb about the miracle cure, and signed up for Curable. It says, "Curable is a guided program that helps you understand why you have pain, why it persists, and what you can do about it." Bingo! Pushes all my buttons!  It's all about the mind-body connections, and how understanding and noting what is going on is the key to having less pain. I'm still not totally on board with this - it doesn't say "it's all in your head" but it does say that original physical causes for pain can be amplified and turned into recurrent pathways, so the pain the brain experiences is real, but maybe can be cured or reduced by non-physical means.  There are several pieces to it - basic pain education, with links to publications, meditation exercises from two schools - noting (my MBSR approach) and relaxation - and, finally and most difficult, self analysis by doing guided writing exercises. It's hard. And I'm still a little skeptical. But I'm slowly approaching it, and it's been a while since I've done completely honest private journalling. (And remember, never done therapy.) I still have my subscription, but I access it less than once a day. So definitely not a 30-day miracle cure for me.

I'm sure if I scrolled through my phone I'd find still more apps I thought would fix me. But if there is a theme to the ones I mention here, it's that they all require actual real life work to keep up with them in order to acheive results. Like my bookcase full of self-help books, each one of these has some gem that I'll keep with me going forward.