The Damage Control Master Formula Office of Doom

I think I’ve been working out too hard recently. I finally pulled a muscle a few days ago. My therapist told me to stay off the workouts for at least three weeks. I can still take walks, but no extreme aerobics, and I have to be very careful with the weights, only upper body.  I don’t want to turn a small injury into a large mishap.

So I guess this gives me a chance to talk about something else. Work’s been amusing of late. We’ve had several odd clients over the past month. A few have been just plain bizaar.

Also, I bought a new set of clothes! I splurged on a three day weekend and purchased several hundred dollars worth of business attire, which I can conveniently write off on my taxes as a business expense.

Other than that, nothing new in my life, just the same old routine. Sometimes I’ll buy my vitamins online, sometimes I’ll get them at the vitamins shop. But that’s about it.

I’ve added something new to my office workout, the jump rope.

It’s really in the gray area of office aerobics, because I don’t actually jump rope IN the office. The ceiling is too low, plus I’m like most ladies in that I look a little weird jumping rope (you know what I’m talking about). So, I jump rope in a little grassy area on a hill outside my office.

I usually jump rope after work, I use the office bathroom to change into my sports bra and running outfit, then I jog up the hill and just start jumping.

I can’t quite hit 100 jumps in a row yet. Jumping is quite a bit harder than when I was a 16 year old girl. I wonder if hopscotch would be a tricky sport these days. After I jump as many times as I can, I take a little walk to catch my breath, then I jump intervals of 30 at a time. I do about a dozen of those and I’m done for the day! But, trust me, it’s harder than it looks.

Believe it or not, I’m not as sore in my legs as I am in my shoulders. I mistakenly bought the weighted rope, which means I’m using those shoulder muscles quite a bit to keep that force going. You don’t feel it at the time, but a day later you’ll be aching quite a bit!

Anyway, give me a couple weeks and I’ll be jumping like a pro! Though, I don’t know if there are any professional jump ropers, it doesn’t seem like a sport with much financial backing.

Finally, here are my health links of the month…

The Damage Control Master Formula is the best antioxidant on the market today, you can learn more about it on Mark Sisson’s website. He also discusses subjects like the caveman diet and how to deal with stress.

Taking it out of the office this week, I went stair climbing.

There’s a long staircase weaving up a hill where I live, it has 174 steps. I had plenty of time to count. I decided to jog up and down the stairs as many times as I could before my heart gave out.

Let me tell you, for a woman of my age, 174 once is about enough for me. I could barely make it to the top!

At least going down was much easier.

The only problem with going down, though, was I parked my car at the top of the steps, so I had to go all the way back up one more time to get to my car! I believe it took me 20 minutes just to climb the stairs the second time, and there was no jogging about it. I was trudging up those steps like an old biddy without her oxygen tank.

Today I’m sore and sore, and then some. But I feel great, and because I’m such a masochist, I’m going back to the steps in a few days, and I’m going do go up and down them twice, and nothings going to stop me! Maybe next time I won’t look like such an old biddy, or if I do, maybe six or seven times more and I won’t look like such a biddy. I know one thing, I’m taking some best multivitamins before I climb those stairs the next time.

Also, I’ve really launched myself into the primal nutrition way of living, which means mostly meats and vegetables. I’m not looking for washboard abs, but a nice flat stomach would be good to have.

I will do many things at the office in the name of good health.

Stair climbing is not one of them.

I am just not a stair climber, I don’t think my body was built for it. Jogging, bicycling, even lifting weights are all fine by me. But, something about me knees or my hips, or the way I waddle a bit from side to side when I climb stairs just ruins the whole process for me. It’s not something I enjoy, nor will I ever.

So I take the elevator.

As much as I push the “health at the office” thing, I still take the elevator, even though it is one of those common first steps (no pun intended) to getting back in health. “Don’t use a remote control!” “Stop eating desert” “Stop using elevators!” Well, I don’t use a remote control (no TV), and I don’t eat desserts, but I’m going to keep using elevators until the day I die. Until then I’ll find other ways to keep in good health at the office, as I’ve been doing successfully for most a year now.

Speaking of which, one of the things I’ve been doing is research on healthnets. I found a great site called primal nutrition where you can buy vitamin supplements. The company also runs a health blog where they post on subjects like abs on a high fat diet.

It must the warming weather, but people at the office have started to pick up the trend of working out during breaks.

There are several of us now that take about 10 minutes of our lunch break to do yoga together. Power yoga! What an oximoron. It’s really basically just stretching, but it’s nice to have a group of people to do the stretching with.

In other news, I switched gyms recently, and I’m already thinking of switching back.

My old gym was one of those “Philadelphia” gyms. A bunch of beefy guys a bunch of wobbly mirrors, a bunch of free weights, and a bunch of sweat (it’s okay to be a beefy woman at one of these beefy gyms).

The new gym I’ve been going to for the last few weeks is a “Los Angeles” gym. It’s sleek, sexy, there’s boxercising for women, or I should say for girls, because all the ladies there are crisp, thin gazelles with wonderful gams. Sometimes it’s just too much to take. I’ve been trying to keep up, but I just feel a little intimidated at times. Oh well, if you can’t beat ‘em, run with ‘em. At least I don’t have orthorexia!

On another note, I found a website that helps me/you with how to find someone on the internet. It’s handy.

The power lunch and the power walk are easily combined into the power lunch walk.

I only do this two days a week, usually because I’m running a lunch meeting, or I have errands to take care of over my lunch break. Basically, I’ll start my lunch break off by drinking a weight loss shake. Protein shake would be a more applicable name as I’m not really on a weight loss shake diet, I’m just trying to get enough protein to tide me over.

After I’ve had my shake I leave the building and walk through the “forest” toward the citywalk drive where many of the lunch vendors are. I use the term ‘forest’ liberally as it’s really just a sectioned off area of grass and weeds where the city isn’t allowed to build anything.

I pass the lunch vendors and head out to the real park where I walk around the lake a couple times. I take a break and I drink a sports drink and I down some multivitamins and a few omega 3 capsules, then I walk back to the office.

I think I’d like to live in New York City where Central Park is always accessible during the day time. Sometimes there’s construction or an event going on near the park I usually walk through, and it makes power walking darn near impossible.

Thus, in the span of about an hour I’ve had a nutritious meal–though not always tasty– and I’ve walked a good 2.5 miles.  Then it’s back to the office where I do little more research on vitamins online and that’s my power lunch walk break!

The push up is such a simple exercise. It’s a much better thing to do if you’re a man, because I suppose men care more about their pecks and byceps, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to do as a women.

Of course, there is a “girl” push up, which is what I do, but I don’t really believe in a difference between a “girl” and a “guy” push-up. Every body has a different body, and we all need to work different areas and muscles.

There is one major problem with doing pushups at the office. When I do several pushups, the blood rushes to my head. When I stand up I look bright red, so the next person who sees me either thinks I’m fuming mad, or painfully embarrassed. My boss walked in on me after I had done several pushups, and he almost freaked out. He was nervous the rest of the day because he thought it was my “time of the month.” Oh well, I’ve got stronger muscles. Sort of.

And now for los lovely links. The health blog of the month is the damage control master formula website. It’s a fine place for multivitamins of all sorts. And if that is no good, then try out the best antioxidant website, it might fare a little better.

The gym I go to occasionally is filled with people who do walking stretches. They look very odd in their leotards and jockey shorts squatting down the hallways with weights in their hands. They walk the way I imagine velociraptors might, low to the ground, with an awkward bounce, yet balanced.

I guess something about the leotards is supposed to signify that these people are graceful, this is the way we’re SUPPOSED to stretch, but I don’t buy it. I think it’s an attention exercise.

There are plenty of attention exercises out there. Attention exercises don’t necessarily do much for your cardiovascular system or improve your muscle tone or strength, they are primarily invented for people with hot bodies to show off at the gym.

There’s a butt tuck thing I’ve seen women doing repetitively at the gym I go to. They always do this butt tuck in front of the weight sets (where the bulkiest of meatheads cluster) and the butt tuck doesn’t tuck the butt as much as wave it ferociously at the men behind it. I’m not a ferocious butt wiggler, so I don’t approve.

The man thrust is another useless exercise meant to display a man’s….well, his thrusting ability. The man thrust is sort of a reverse sit-up. I believe it works the back muscles, or maybe the abs, but it simulates the exact same motion as….you’ve figured it out.

Anyway, what I’d like to see, is someone doing the man thrust, the butt tuck, or the velociraptor walk in the hallway of an office or administrative building. Probably not as sexy outside the gym.

That’s my rant for the day; now for my links:
The vitamin shop isn’t actually a vitamin shop, it’s just a health blog, but a decent one.
Vitamins Online is a hubpage, not a blog, just a little sheet of information.
Omega 3 capsules is a link to a great vitamin website. Somewhere to get not only fish oils, but other sorts of multivitamins as well.

Until next time, keep on stretching!

Everybody’s got a favorite method on how to relieve stress at the office. I don’t think it’s a concious thing. Well, it is for some people (me!), but everyone has habits and routines they go through to keep the stress from building up too much. The stress ball used to be popular, now stumbling is popular (though time wasting!), but I’d like to list some of the most interesting office stress relief habits I’ve seen around here.

1) Gambling. There’s a guy here who plays online poker at work. I’m sure there’s something ethically wrong with this, but apparently he talked it over with his boss, claiming he just did it to calm his nerves, and his boss was okay with that. I sure wouldn’t be if I was his boss.

2) Popping Pills. There’s an older gentleman at the office who has every form of herbal supplement you can imagine. I’m a supplement fan myself, I could always go for some omega 3 benefits, but I believe the ACT OF POPPING PILLS is this guys subconcious way of relieving stress. He downs pills all day long. Several times an hour. It’s nice though, because he offers some to me occasionally, and I never refuse.

3) Drinking. Not alcohol, just bottled water. There’s a girl who works here (yes, she’s a woman, but she’s half my age, so I’m calling her what I will, I’m so OLD!) who constantly nurses a large battle of water. Maybe this isn’t stress relief as much as just oral fixation.

4) Exercise. That’s me! I’m the one at the office who stands up and does funny looking stretches and exercises at odd times of the day. Laugh away, but I believe my form of stress relief is the best!