Living an EXTRAordinary Life

Although I am not running at this time, running is never far from me. My husband is a runner, and I have many friends who run as well. I also meet people frequently who are runners. And there are some themes to the thoughts that I notice that these runners have. I wanted to discuss that ….

The first is the whole notion of not being a real runner? What makes a person a real runner? A real runner runs. They run a few days a week or more. It’s important to them. They miss it when they don’t. They run even if the weather is not perfect (sometimes). They buy running shoes and technical fabrics. They are out there … running. Doesn’t have to be fast. Doesn’t have to be steady … you can still be a runner and take walk breaks. You are also a real runner even if you don’t participate in races. REAL RUNNERS RUN. That is it. Simple and truthful. Don’t confuse yourself with an elite.  An elite runner is a professional, and most people cannot attain the crazy level of training (and low body fat) that they have.

Another refrain us runners say a lot is “I’m just doing the half”.  WTF?  What do you mean JUST??? That is 13.1 freaking miles my friend!  That is NOT a small accomplishment.  How many people can do that?  How many people even try?

Sure, I understand how it feels.  You have a few half-marathons under your belt and you think you can do more.  So you train hard and complete a 30K or a marathon (42K).    And it was awesome, it was fun and it was also torture.  You get addicted and want to do more.

But then you don’t feel up to the full distance and so you decide to run halfs for a while.  So you feel like a failure.  Trust me, I know.  But I can also tell you that the many times I have finished a half marathon, while my husband finishes his full, that I am so happy that I “just did the half”.  I have my medal, my water, my post run fuel, my flip-flops and I am done running. I am always so happy that I don’t have double the distance to do.

Half-marathon distance is a perfect distance in my opinion.  But I think the word “half” is what is tripping us up and making us all not feel good enough when we complete one.  Making us explain that we “can” do a full.  So I propose changing the name.  And mini-marathon is even worse, more “degrading” that half.  I propose we call them 21Ks.  Now doesn’t that sound nice.

As humans, and especially as runners, we all tend to be hard on ourselves.  There is no need for such foolishness.  I would even bet that the majority of runners are driven in their personal lives as well.  No need.  There is more to life than being our own harsh critic.

So just go out there and run your 1 mile or your 20 miles.  Run it fast or slow.  Include walking intervals or not.  You ARE a runner, and you are damn good at it and should be PROUD.

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What?  Getting ex back?  What post talked about that?  LOL.

Anyway, some updates from my life.

Indy continues to improve.  The last ALT value was 131.  He just had another test yesterday, and we are hoping for that magic number of 100 or less.  I predict it will be 100 teens.

Joey turned 20 years old a few weeks ago.  I can’t believe that I have a cat that is 20.  He has been not wanting to eat and I noticed one day that he was having trouble chewing.  It went beyond just being picky.  I had also noticed a few weeks back that his breath really stunk.  Really badly, like nothing I’ve ever smelled before.  It was not the expected uremic smell from the kidney disease.  So I plop him on the counter by the good light, and open his mouth.  He fought me, but I saw what I thought was bleeding.  I called in my husband to help hold him down and I see a mass.  Pretty large, bulbulous and red.  Not bleeding though.  I also noticed excessive tartar on the teeth.

Not sure what to do, I took him to the vet earlier this week.  The vet was very concerned, but since he is so very old with compromised kidneys, we cannot put him under for a thorough evaluation.  The mass could be something really scary or it could be inflammation/infection from the bacteria on the teeth.  He managed to scrape some tartar off the molars and started Joey on antibiotics.  We’ll see if it looks any better when we go back for his acupuncture next week.

Me?  Well, I have only two more sessions of physical therapy left.  It has helped me build up some muscle.  Not sure though if it helped the pain go away or if it was a result of my stopping most intense exercise.  Was it the rest or the strengthening?  Or both?  I guess we’ll never know, but I am feeling a lot better. I still have pain when out in the cold that is probably a result of the arthritis.  I’ve been cleared to do my own lower body routines and cardio … except for running or jumping still.  I started taking a supplement for joint pain.  It’s not glucosamine/condroitin because I am not sure of their efficacy in humans, and they are made of shellfish, so they are not even vegetarian!  The supplement I’m taking is Zyflamend and I really think its helping.

Yes, its true.

The 21-day Vegan Kickstart Challenge officially ended on the 21st of January, and they took the content down.  I thought they’d leave it up.  I didn’t start on the first day because of travel and illness.  But I was wrong.  The first time this year.  I have a few more credits, so its okay.

Where does that leave me?  Well… the same place.  Trying to maintain as high of a level of vegan as possible, and trying to eat more whole foods and cook more.  I have a ton of cookbooks and assorted recipes, so I can still try making tasty new things.   I can ignore the complicated ones.  The challenge starts again March 1, so maybe I’ll do it again, and this time eat the food as “assigned” every day, except for the days there are foods I don’t like.

Yesterday, I have to admit.  I had cheese.  At first, it wasn’t intentional.  We had had plans to go to a friends house to watch a movie, and we knew that we would be getting pizza.  I had 100% intention of having either half a pizza or a small one ordered without cheese for me.  Last time I had pizza, I removed the cheese, and had three toppings and extra sauce and it was yummy!  However, during the day, my delightful husband offered to make macaroni and cheese for lunch and I said that that sounded good … totally forgetting that I was eating vegan!   So, I figured … what the hey and ordered regulation pizza.  It was white pizza too, which I haven’t had in a long time.

My stomach didn’t feel too bad, even with the extra infusion of heart shaped Smiley cookies.  Or two.  Or three.  Actually, I was fine, stomach wise, but my nose clogged up big time.  I didn’t actually feel bloated until this afternoon.   So now I know … if I must, only one serving of dairy per day.

In other GOOD news, I had a very nice physical therapy session today.  My therapist says I am doing really, really well and gettting stronger every day.  She said that there was no reason I couldn’t participate in a racing event in October (location to be determined).   I can do a smaller race running, if I want.  Or walk a half.  Or run half of a half and walk the other half of the half.  That makes me happy.  Long distances are out for good, or at least a long while, she reminded me.  I can handle this.  It’s not like I could run a half marathon anyway. 

And I FORGOT to mention that I did try one other recipe from the challenge.  It was a Sunday morning, and I received the day’s menu, which called for Sweet Potato Pudding for breakfast.  That sounded really good.  It has oatmeal in it which I figured would make it nice and filling.  I had to cook and then cool the sweet potatoes (yay for the microwave at times), then I mixed it in the blender.  I put it in a bowl, sat down, ready to savor it.  And it was delicious!  However, it wasn’t cutting it as a breakfast for me.  It was truly a pudding, so therefore it became designated as a dessert.  Yay for dessert!  Using pumpkin would be equally delicious.  Adding the oatmeal is great … added fiber and even protein.  Not everyone is aware of how much protein is actually in oatmeal.  I ended up with a bagel with Better Than Cream Cheese.

I think for breakfast, it would have worked for me had I made oatmeal the traditional way and then mixed in the cooked sweet potato into the cereal.

I have been reading Wesley the Owl.  I highly recommend it.  It’s a very cute story and written well.  A fast, fun read.  Look for it on my sister blog later this week at jennreviewsthings.com.

Tomorrow, my Fuzzy goes for a teeth cleaning.  Wish us all luck.

The last few days, eating wise, have not been exciting.  I’ve been eating lots of salads and leftovers. We ate at Eat ‘n Park last night, where I had a veggie burger and onion rings.

On Sunday, I did make one new recipe, which  is the Vegetarian Swiss steak.  This is a seitan based food with tomato sauce, onions, peppers.  I did not have any green peppers, so I didn’t use, but I think it would have benefitted from them.  I also left out the mushrooms.  I am the one vegetarian in the world who does not like mushrooms.    I get asked that all the time “How can you be vegetarian and not like mushrooms?”  Um, us vegetarians like LOTS of things.  I don’t like broccoli, cauliflower or uncooked carrots either.  Or pears or grapefruit.  If this makes me weirder, so be it. 

Sorry, off on a tangent there ….

Here is how the Swiss steak looked right out of the oven.

And here it is on my plate:

looking a little less dog foody.

But I promise … it was tasty and the recipe makes a lot and I ate this for four days and now I am tired of it!  But it is a great source of clean protein and very low carb.

And here is a photo of the Roasted Red Pepper Soup which is less digusting looking.  I didn’t want to leave you with that other image in your memory.

On another note, exercise has been a little more exciting to report on.  I finally feel better and on Sunday, I worked out for the first time in a long time.  I ellipticalled for 30 minutes … which caused me to have a mini-migraine.  On Monday, it was full blown migraine, so I only did my PT … and Monday is the day that I go to the facility, so it was a long session.   Yesterday, I cleaned up around the house and I did a cardio/ab workout followed by my at-home PT.

I’m excited about exercising again, and interested to see what my hip will and won’t permit me to do.

That’s all really for now!

We will start with the great news.  It’s about my cat Indy.  For those who don’t know, I’ll explain the problem quickly.  Indy is a big, fluffy black cat, who is 14.5 years old.  He always, always eats (with the exception of a 3 month stint of anorexia a few years back) and he never, ever vomits.   In October and November, he had had three separate incidents of vomiting and pooping everywhere, and not eating.   These would last one day and he’d feel better the next day.   After the third episode, I took him to our regular vet, who saw nothing on exam, so we sent for blood testing.  The results of that showed pretty severe liver problems.  For example, the ALT was 499 and the normal high is about 100ish.  A follow-up x-ray showed nothing but a bit of arthritis in the spine.

He was referred to a veterinary internal medicine specialist, where he received an ultrasound, which was also inconclusive, and a fine needle aspirate of the liver was sent out for cytology.  At this point, we were looking either at cholangiohepatitis or cancer.   And the cytology didn’t help.  The first order of business was to treat for the cholangiohepatitis, which is a long course of antibiotics.  If the liver enzymes stabilize, then its likely the hepatitis and NOT cancer.

Thursday, I received a call from the veterinary center and guess what?  His ALT was down to 160!  Yay!  The antibiotics are helping.  Not that I needed bloodwork to tell me that, as he has returned totally to his kitten like antics and his very very large appetite. 

This is my bad boy Indy

Now for the Vegan Challenge.

Saturday was my weigh in day and I was down 2.2 pounds.  Yay.

Friday food was good.

*Breakfast was oatmeal with maple syrup and peacans

*Lunch was leftover couscous confetti salad

*Dinner was out and I had bbq seitan pita with fries and a salad

Saturday, well, I did remain vegan except for some accidental mayo, but healthy wasn’t as strong.

*Breakfast was hash browns and an English Muffin

*Lunch was at Burger King … a BK veggie and small onion ring

*Dinner was Domino’s pizza … no cheese, extra sauce and black olives, onion and spinach

But that is not overcomerable (is that a word?) … I will do better this week for sure, and I hope to make a return to doing cardio.

And I really wish I could get pictures into this blog!

It’s a new year.  I thought I would start it off by doing something a little different.  Resolutions are boring.  I mean, who doesn’t want to get fit, lose weight, get organized, etc.  We all do!  It’s the rare person who can claim to be all of those.

I only knew that I wanted to try to eliminate dairy.  Why?  Well, there are many reasons, but the one that makes the most sense is because I am allergic to the milk proteins casein and whey.  Let me tell you … casein and whey are hidden in everything!  And the other MAIN reason is that as a vegetarian, it only makes sense to progress into this way of eating, for me.  I already refuse to wear leather, suede, wool or use products that have been tested on animals.   If you want to get into it further, you can certainly find reasons why many experts are saying that it is not good for us, and you can certainly find out how dairy is an even crueler industry than eating the cows that dairy comes from.

And because I was giving up the dairy, I stepped it up to eliminate eggs and to try to eat as many whole foods as possible to try to ease up reliance on convenience foods.  I think that switching to whole foods, foods that come from nature, that I actually have to cook and/or prepare, will be the key to my finally reaching my goal weight.

This style of eating is also just naturally low in sugar.  I am not deliberately eliminating that.  If I find something vegan and has sugar, I will consider it.  And I don’t mean fruit.  Fruit sugar is another thing altogether.

To help me with this challenge, I decided to follow the guidelines and recipes of the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart by the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).  You can find information about it here:

I tried to start on Monday, but although it was vegan, except for some butter, I don’t count it since I relied on what I had and not on whole foods.

On Tuesday, I made the Confetti Couscous Salad.  I had to adjust it, as I thought I had raisins and cabbage, but I had neither.  Well, I had cabbage, it was just not edible.  I deliberately left out the carrots and substituted dried cranberries for the raisins.  This was absolutely yummy.

Wednesday, which was even better, I had oatmeal for breakfast, for lunch I had the couscous salad leftovers (and I still have more!) and I made the Carrot Red Pepper Soup, without the carrots, so essentially it was just Roasted Red Pepper Soup.  This was very easy to make and very tasty … but needed some spices … maybe some Italian seasoning.  I also made the “Southern” Beans and Greens.  I put Southern in quotes, cause I am quite sure that in the South, it ain’t vegan!  My beans of choice were organic Pinto and my greens were kale.  I thought these were really good.  This mixture could also be wrapped in a tortilla (thanks for the idea Christy) or served with rice, which is what I had for lunch today.

I don’t aspire to follow the food plan to the letter, but I am definitely staying vegan, whole foods and using the recipes on the plan.   I’ll be eating out a little this weekend, but I will be doing my best to stick to whole food, low fat, and vegan.

It’s only been three full days, and I can tell you I feel better already.  My stomach doesn’t feel all pouchy and full.  I feel lighter.  I hope to take off a few pounds at the end of this as well, especially once my cough goes away completely and I can exercise again.

Adios, my friends and readers, I’ll be back tomorrow with a more complete list and maybe some photos and other updates.

*I was actually directed to this particular challenge by my very beautiful, talented and intelligent friend, Emily, a Holistic Health Counselor and owner of Triumph Wellness.  Her site is here:  and her blog can be found here:   2 Comments