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Farmer Kriss & Co.
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being Boss

2/5/2016

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Morning run through the Rockies. Hit the bliss at 42 minutes.
PictureWhile I do appreciate that running is free, I am not ashamed to spend $120 on gear like these amazing Brooks Glycerines. Perhaps could have been had for cheaper on Amazon, but I love to support my local running shop and take advantage of the advice and expertise of the staff there.

This morning I happened to be running through a pass in the Rocky Mountains. I live in Wisconsin and partake of gorgeous rolling farms views regularly. But today's run was stunning and new and gifted me with my first understanding of purple mountain majesty, my first glimpse of a white-striped magpie and my first inhale of crisp blue Montana sky. The run also gifted me with almost unbearable happiness.

But that's not out of the ordinary for me.  At about 42 minutes in today, I was washed with a powerful, almost incapacitating feeling of gratefulness. I was flooded in beauty, joy and hope. Last Wednesday in a fluorescent-lit, glossy-varnished gym, with dance music propelling a sweaty circuit routine, I felt the same river of thankfulness overtake me - right around Burpee 10, 40 minutes in.  Though it's been 18 years since I weaned my fourth child, I recognized the flush as being quite akin to the bliss I often experienced when a tiny warm baby latched on and set my milk flowing.  Like the release of endorphins triggered by working out, the let-down response of a lactating mother is a chemical reaction. Endorphin, by the way, includes the root word morphine and describes a class of body-produced polypeptides that bind to receptors in the brain to kill pain, reduce cravings and lift mood.  Any questions?

I will never nurse a baby again and feel that outrageous, unreasonable sense of well-being, but I can give myself something pretty damn close by committing to being boss - everyday. Or most. Science backs me up on this - read the excellent and funny Younger Next Year  books - and my own experience is conclusive.  Regular cardio-zone heart rate workouts of at least 45 minutes on least three days a week create a cascade of benefits at any age - including initiating brain cell growth, saving memory, re-building bone loss, increasing flexibility, restoring balance and making muscle, as well as enhancing emotional well-being and confidence.

I'm a crazy-busy small-scale farmer, agriculture advocate and community organizer. And I teach bootcamp in my local high school gym to other such obligated people from 4:30am to 6:30am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On the off days, I like to run or swim. But sometimes I get busy and that's when my troubles begin. On days when I feel down or hopeless or defeated, if I find the presence of mind to reflect on my day,  more often than not I realize that I simply skipped a workout.

Depressed by  nature? Defeated by hard times? Exhausted from raising toddlers, doing policy work or writing computer programs? Saddened by set-backs and surprises? Nothing will help you cope better than loving yourself by working your body - quite hard - every single day.  While I'm not promising the sort of euphoric waterfall I regularly experience  - I hesitate to promise anything since I was disappointed by a certain childbirth education video that assured me I would feel just that upon pushing out the babies mentioned above - regular exercise will most certainly improve your mood and abilities, for both the short and the long term.  Again - science. 


On days when I know I have a tough task that requires a lot of mental effort and strategy, I make a point of working out, even if I am traveling for meetings and have to get up early and treadmill in a dimly-lit hotel gym during a snow storm.  I personally think running is the greatest travel workout, because it can be done for free, without equipment, and allows me to quickly and quietly explore an unfamiliar place, with all of its fresh sights, sounds and smells. But I've been known to pull up a youtube workout on my laptop and get 'er done on the hotel room carpet.






I'm not in such a situation this week, however. Got another run like today's ahead of me tomorrow and the next day.  And dips in mineral hot springs in between. I'm told there are wild bighorn sheep that scale the steep rocky foothills that rise on either side of my highway running route, so I'll have to keep a lookout for those. I truly have so much to be thankful for, including the ability and opportunity to use my body well -and my workouts enable me to fully FEEL the truth.

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When I run through this pass tomorrow morning, I'm told I should try to spot bighorn sheep that cling to these bluffs.
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Take Me Home, Country Roads

8/24/2015

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Heading back home after a morning run through the Valley of the Roosters, past the tassled corn and blooming prairie. Saluted the sun and now it's time for some coffee.  This is why my morning workout is a gift I love to give myself.
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Sweet

3/7/2015

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I love my gym. It's the local high school. My community Boot Camp co-op has the great privilege of using it between 4:30 and 6:30am on M-W-F while school's in season. I love my fellow early-morning boot-campers, I love the sunrise coming up when we walk out of the school sweaty and spent, and I love these nasty old barbells. Pretty soon, it'll be spring enough that my workouts will morph from circuits in the gym and lifting in the weight room to running on the roads and lifting produce bins in the fields. I'll love that, too. For play there will be road rides on our crazy hills and leisurely sight-seeing rides on the many Rails-To-Trails groomed and gorgeous through nearby farming communities. Life is sweet.
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Friday Fitness Tip: CHART IT!

2/6/2015

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Other than straight-up just getting out there and doing it, I think the most effective way to build a fitness program into your life is to use a daily charting system of some sort. There are a gajillion of these apps and tools out there now, from My Fitness Pal on your phone to FitBit in your cleavage. My personal favorite is WebMD on my computer. Yes, it requires me to stop and get in front of the computer several times a day to log in my food, exercise, water and activity, but HEY, I'M WORTH IT.  And so are you.

These tracking devices and systems are all the rage now, which makes them irritating, and they certainly aren't a substitute for hard work and focus. They won't pick up your feet and take them out to the pavement, but they might wake you up in the morning and make you pause before you put a plate of fries in your mouth. Trackers of all sorts are terrific tools to help you do want you say you want to do - eat better and less, work out regularly, sleep for a reasonable amount of time, drink enough water and maintain a healthy weight.

Trackers are really just a fad version of the old-fashioned diary - and there is plenty of evidence in history that those folks who keep track of their days relative to their goals are some of the most successful people around.  Several years ago, when I was 50 pounds heavier and decided to get at that a bit, I started a daily food log.  Actually, it was incorporated into a bigger daily journal of my day, based along the lines of an Ignatian Examen (a lovely practice I still do each evening - and maybe we'll cover that in another post someday).  Being a bit of a techno-phobe and being a LOT of a anti-diet snob, I started the practice on paper because it was less alienating to me. But after my husband (who eventually ended up losing 40 of his own soft-in-the-middle pounds) got rolling on My Fitness Pal, I put my toe into the charting waters with WebMD.

Learning it was a bit slow-going, but now I love it. 'Cause here's the thing - charting, just like practicing fitness, is a way of loving myself. Does it take time? Yes, about 10 minutes 3 times a day. Is it narcissistic? Absolutely. It's all about me, baby. But you know what, it's actually all about everyone for whom I grow veggies and cook. (How do you think my husband lost all that weight? He added exercise to his life, but I made all the food.) It's also all about the many people who ask me how I lost weight, how I got healthier and stronger, how I am able to do all I do in a day. I know how I did it because I wrote it all down.

Is it  boring? Not at all - in fact, I learn a ton on WebMD every single day.  I learned  what food really costs, in terms of weight and also in terms of energy. Some foods just aren't worth eating, and I would never have learned that if I wasn't charting.  Where a food log helped me see just what and how much I was eating, WebMD educated me about what those foods did or didn't do for me. And an app or program does the same with exercise - educates you about what are the best choices for your goals. I now have a pretty ingrained sense of the calorie and nutrition values of most food I eat, but now I chart more for the accountability since things DO creep back up and into my diet that push my weight beyond my most comfortable number.

Neverthless, the pen-and-paper food diary was a great place to start, for me, and it might be for you. That act of writing created space for mindful eating in my life, and I continue to list every day the foods which I particularly enjoyed. What a gift is good food! We should enjoy it!  The act of recording what I eat helps me to appreciate both the fuel and the fun that food provides. Bon Appetit!
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    Farm Girl Fitness

    YOU first, then the farm! Having been in the farming biz now for nearly 10 years, I've seen enough to know that we treat our farms, families and friends far better than we treat ourselves.  I've been out of the fields for back injuries, colds, plantar fasciitis and carpal tunnel syndrome. I've carried 50 extra pounds on my body and eaten frozen pizza while packing organic veggies into CSA boxes. But not any more. This blog is about allocating time, space and energy enough for cooking well and working out - getting  farm girls the fuel they need to keep up the good fight of feeding the world.

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