Breaking the Camel's Back.

12:30PM: Holly got up and did an hour on the treadmill today, then went with Diane to do the bottom portion of the Stop sign after breakfast. Breakfast was French toast with fruit.

I went with the groups to Camel Back. Once again I was part of the slow group, but all three groups (slow, medium and fast) met up at the bowl at the top for the group shadow photos.





1:45PM: After the hike, was Aquacise. A small class today because some of the crazier guests decided to do a second hike to burn calories and went to do the Stop Sign. I don't think the 100 or so more calories burnt doing that hike over the water aerobics makes up for the whole body exercise and muscle relaxing effects of the water.

Lunch had a pretty good salad (not as good as the Greek salad, but still good) with some cheesy stuff, olives, nuts, etc. The soup was the most delicious soup yet. I think it was a roasted pepper soup, but no matter what it was, it was good. The main meal itself was a different story. A tostada, but the brand of tortilla they use has an off flavor, isn't fried or baked and is topped with some really nasty tasting beans. Tried to spice mine up, but couldn't make it edible. It doesn't help that they provide mild Pace brand salsa instead of good fresh salsa. Gave up on eating it after a couple of bites. We were sitting there discussing different options for going out to get a replacement meal (Arby's or Subway) when Jerry and Uma walked by with burgers! They had asked for something else since they were allergic to the beans. So the group of us flagged down one of the servers and they were more then glad to get us burgers instead. Holly didn't want one since she doesn't like Boca burgers. Yeah burgers! Amazing how little things like that make you happy. And kept us from running out to get something to eat elsewhere.



8:00PM: This afternoon we had Toning with Exercise Balls taught by Sharon. Excellent, hard and funner! After that was scheduled Hip hop and Tai Chi, but we went to Pioneer Park instead. Pioneer Park is a municipal park in St. George that is in the red rock bluffs overlooking the town. Beautiful scenery, and fun to hike and climb around in. Back to Fitness Ridge in time for dinner. Dinner was Boca burgers with steamed vegetables (I really like the Boca burgers but Holly thinks they are disgusting) and desert was a banana tofu pudding on Grape Nuts. Holly wasn't over fond of it, and neither were a lot of other people, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. After dinner I went down to soak in the hot tub and read, while Holly went to go play a board game with some of the other guests.


Goodnight.

When the Volcano goes...

1:30PM: Holly went to this morning's stretch and toning class before breakfast, while I took my time getting up. Glad I did, since I was dead on my feat by the end of today's hike. Breakfast was just a bowl of oatmeal with a little side of fruit. Then off to the hikes. Holly did the lower half of the Stop Sign twice round trip with one of the other guests here at Fitness Ridge. I went on one of the Volcano hikes (the slow one...). There were three levels of the hike today, depending on how fast you were you went either to the top of the volcano, to the side of the volcano, or to the edge of the desert leading to the volcano. All three groups climbed to the top of the mountain that overlooks Snow Canyon, then down the ridge towards the volcano. In the photo below, you can see the intermediate group trudging through the middle of the valley. That was about as far as my group got. Below and to the right you can see part of the advanced group up on the volcano rim. This was a long hike, so we ran a little late to Denae's Aquacise class. Lunch was oriental soup, spinach and mushroom stuffed pita with a side salad with pine nuts and blueberry's.




6:15PM: Oh treading! The agony! The exhaustion! Ugh. Luckily Michelle's Yogalaties helped stretch and relax the muscles afterwards.
Dinner was salmon on wasabi mashed potatoes with asparagus on the side. Desert was an apple crumble with mixed berries. I found out that if you don't like fish, they will give you a Boca burger instead. I ate well, and am very happy. And tired. Goodnight.

Tired Wednesday.

6:15PM: I slept poorly last night with my bad knee and woke up tired, lethargic, depressed with a painful knee and a headache. Breakfast was eggs, sorbet and dry whole grain raisin English muffins. You can't get butter or cream cheese to put on your breakfast breads to save your life. no problem putting a bunch of sugar in the form of jelly, but I want saturated fats in the form of rancid cow's milk on my toast!

Holly hiked the overlook and reverse stop sign, and I went on the White Rock Reversed hike. Beautiful hike, and we took a whole bunch of scenic detours.

Aquacise was with Sharon. She found my falling asleep while exercising amusing.

Lunch was the best ever. Don't know what the soup was, but I liked it. Holly didn't seem too thrilled with it though. And they served my favorite salad, a Greek salad. Yum. I wished they served this salad every day. Then the main course was their very delicious pizza! Everybody's favorite. First meal I've come away from feeling satisfied.


After lunch I was tired and took a nap. Managed to sleep through Circuit Training and Kickboxing. Got up in time to get to Stretch class. Then sat in the swing enjoying the sun until dinner. Dinner was a chicken rice bowl with a "Taramisu" desert.

Back in the Saddle again.

6:20PM: Wow, it's been a long tough day. Poor Holly was unable to sleep last night due to her pleurisy. She pushed herself a little too hard yesterday and really aggravated it. So we didn't go to Tai Chi this morning but got up to eat our buckwheat pancakes.

Holly stayed home and rested while I went on the advance hike, The Saddle. This hike is a bit on the extreme side. Almost straight up for the first 45 minutes to an hour. Then mostly straight down until we reach Fern Gulch. Then it's a slow decent then across the desert back to the van. A good two and a half hour hike.

Holly contacted her doctor and got his opinion on her health. According to him, it will probably take months for the pleurisy to heal and the pain is aggravated by working out. So after Aquacise I went down to John's office to discuss our options in dealing with this and our time here. The best option would be for us to finish this week and come back after Holly heals, preferably for two weeks. So John talked to Tami to get approval for this plan. After lunch (turkey pita sandwich with an oriental salad and vegetable soup) and toning class, John gave me the thumbs up on that plan. we are going to finish up this week and come back for two weeks in late summer/fall.

I finished up the day's workouts with my knee really bothering me, so this is probably a good thing for my knee too.

Dinner was a veggie lasagna with (yuck) broccoli and a apple spice cake with berries.

That's our day, talk to everyone again tomorrow.

Monday Stops

1:40PM: Monday morning rolled around again. It was difficult getting out of bed to get onto the elliptical machine this morning. For a change, Holly was up and raring to go before me. She got on the treadmill for most of an hour. Breakfast was egg whites on toast with a little bit of turkey bacon. I'd have gladly traded the egg whites for more turkey bacon. And of the three things they've served the eggs on, bagel, english muffin and toast, the toast was by far the worst and the bagel was the best.

Then it was off to Snow Canyon to do the Stop Sign. What a difference from two weeks ago. Then Holly barely made it up there and was having extreme problems breathing. Now she left me in her dust for the first half, and even though she slowed down on the uphill leg, she still beat me to the top. From the top, Holly turned around and made it most of the way back down before the van picked her up. Me, I took the trail along the top for 15 minutes, then went back to the van. (Didn't make it to the overlook because I was told to be back to the van by 10:30.) Then it was back to Fitness Ridge for Aquacise with Sharon.



Lunch was a zucchini and garlic soup followed by a strange wrap with a nasty little side salad. The wrap was in a whole wheat tortilla (wish I new the brand so I would no what not to ever buy) around a mix of Boca burger, potatoes, rice, beans and stuff. I tried a bite, then opened up the wrap to dig out the little edible scraps of Boca burger. Now I'm burping up garlic from the soup. Lunch wasn't a real hit with me today. It's sunny and warm out today, so after lunch we sat out in the sun for a little bit while we wait for Circuit Training to start.

On your mark, Get set, Go week 3!

7:00AM: And so begins our third week at Fitness Ridge. It looks to be another beautiful cloudy and rainy day. The pool cover was left off last night so the pool is going to be cold but at least the hot tub should be warm. Time to get Holly out of bed to go get breakfast and get weighed in. Then we can sit around and do laundry.

6:10PM: Holly lost three pounds and one inch around the waist last week, I lost one and a half pounds and one inch. Breakfast was a Belgian waffle. After breakfast was the weight in and then time for laundry. I then ran to Target to return and exchange a defective USB hub and then to Costco to return and replace a defective camera. Fitness Ridge served a bag lunch with a really odd chicken & cabbage salad sandwich and an odd soup that tasted like minestrone but without the noodles and stuff. I went in search of a pizza place that was open on Sunday in St. George Utah. By hunting down the "Italian Restaurants" in the car's GPS. Ten pizza places later (yes... that's ten, plus two others that I know are closed from last week) I was almost ready to give up when I found a Pizza Hut that was open. Back at the homestead, I got into the hot tub, B.S.'ing with some of the guests and reading my book. Holly worked out on her own while I was at the stores, ate the bagged lunch, took a nap and enjoyed her new MP3 player.

Dinner was an excellent pasta with a meat sauce (turkey meat, but very yummy). Everyone seemed to really enjoy it. Desert was a chocolate tofu pudding over Grape Nuts. We met some of the new guests then all of the stayover guests left while Denae gave the new guests their orientation lecture. It's windy out but you can see the cloud cover beginning to break up. The Oscars are coming on, and Holly's going to watch it while I read.

Oh, yeah... one of the other guests is also blogging. check out Jim's blog.

Off to Zion.

7:20AM: It's off to Zion today! Or at least once Holly gets motivated to get out of bed. Breakfast being served here at Fitness Ridge today is cold cereal with rice/soy milk. Not one of our all time favorites. So we are going to see if we can do a low calorie breakfast on the road to Zion. We're going to make today an all day test of how well we can actually do in the real world to sticking to our calorie limits. Tonight I'll let you know how well we did and how the trip to Zion went.

10:15PM: whole round trip alBefore going to Zion, we stopped at the Bear Paw in St. George for breakfast. Yum. Definitely beat cold cereal for breakfast. At Zion we started on the Pa'rus trail but accidentally started up the Watchman trail so had to double back to the beginning of the Pa'rus.


Came across some benches but none of that relaxing stuff for us!









We hiked along the Virgin river to the end, getting some great photos.





It was great to get to the end, but then there was still the trip back. Holly can really get moving. Very tough for me to keep up.




After getting back to the car, we went for a drive east going up and through the tunnels. What beautiful scenery. Stopped for lunch at Blondie's diner. An old house near Zion next to the Domestic Elk Park that was converted to a diner. They have some great food. Holly had the buffalo burger and I had the elk burger. Great ultra-lean meat that is also very tasty!






On the way back to Fitness Ridge, since we had some extra time we stopped at the Johnson Dinosaur Track Museum. Pretty cool place.

Sharon showed us our slide show/video for the week, then it was off to the buffet for our "eating test".

Now I'm tired and ready for bed.






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Just another rainy Friday.

6:40AM: It's Friday! almost to the end of the week. It's been raining all night and is supposed to rain most of the day today. This morning at Open Gym I did an all upper body weight circuit to favor my hurting knee. I think I would stick with one of the pave road options for the knee even if it wasn't raining. Instead of the Stop Sign, if doing West Canyon Road is an option today I will do that.

11:00AM: Brrr! Being soaking wet just makes you cold. Poor Holly's jacket didn't repel the water too well, and she ended up soaking wet during the hike. Let me repeat that... Brrrrrrrr!

Today we had one of my favorite breakfasts here and one of Holly's least, French Toast.



So Instead of the Stop Sign, Holly and I did the White Rock Reverse Hike. We started up near the Stop Sign at the White Canyon Overlook, then we hiked down through the desert to the Lava Caves, over to Butterfly Rock (see photo on left) then up and over the Petrified Sand Dunes. That's Holly in the photo above looking out over the edge. I can't believe Holly was able to do this hike and climb giving her fear of heights. At the bottom of one of the climbs down that Holly was especially nervous about, she posed as she was afraid she would end up... (photo on right.) I t was a great hike. Uh oh... it's time to run down to the pool, it's already 11:30 and time to go Aquacise. I'll post more when I get a chance this afternoon/evening.






1:30PM: Aquacise was a little chilly, or at least the air was. Getting out and running back to the room to shower was COLD! Lunch was a "tostada", except that I thought that the definition of a tostada included a crunchy tortilla instead of a soft one... The soup was pretty good. Had to pick some green beans out of it though. No green beans for me please!


3:25PM: In the middle of posting my 1:30 post, we had a power outage. So at 2:30 we started the Living Drums class without power, but the power came back only a few minutes into it. What a fun way to work out. Using the exercise balls on pedestals and sum drum sticks, you work out to different rhythms. I now know why drummers are usually so skinny. And confirmed that I have no sense of rhythm. Holly started feeling sick after lunch, took a nap before class but was feeling to sick to her stomach to finish the Living Drums class.
Several other people are also feeling sick to their stomachs after lunch. I wonder if it was the soup, tostada, or the side salad that made them sick. My guess is the salad. Green things are always bad to eat... ;-)

My knee is pretty bad and the instructor said that the Hip hop class would do a lot of hopping around so I'm skipping it. Holly is laying in bed moaning because of her stomach.




7:15PM: My knee is hurting so bad, that I skipped Tai Chi as well. I went down to the office building and read while Holly watched TV and drank tea to help settle her stomach. She felt well enough to eat dinner. It was a turkey loaf/burger (with no bun, I tried to get one, but no luck) with some plain brown rice and steamed carrots and broccoli. Dessert was some Sweet Nothings brand Popsicles.

Tough Thursdays #2

6:35PM: Man am I tired. Started today with Janet's toning class, breakfast of fruit and oatmeal. Holly and I both did the same hike to Fern Gully. I ended up in the slower group, and Denae had the whole slow group (all two of us) turn around early so that the rest of the hikers wouldn't be waiting on us. Holly's group did make it. That's them in the photo to the left taken by me from down stream. And then a photo of Fern Gulch taken by Holly on the right.

After the hike was Aquacise. Fun, refreshing and very tiring. Lunch was "pizza" and a curried cauliflower soup (the cauliflower was pureed and you couldn't taste it over the curry.) The problem with the pizza is that we are only allowed one each.

The this afternoon we had treading with Michelle. Treading is the most intense workout ever. I am so exhausted from treading. Almost hurled from the effort, but made sure I didn't since there would be no replacement calories for those hurled...

It was tough making it through the Michelle's Yogalates class (part yoga, part pilates). Between the hiking and treading, I really hurt my sore knee and was absolutely exhausted.

Dinner was a salmon burger with a brownie.

Wed. Week #2

5:35AM: My headache etc. was appears to all have been from low blood sugar. I was laying in bed last night feeling all miserable and trying to get to sleep while Holly watched TV, when an add for Arby's roast beef sandwiches came on. I started to salivate and think how there was an Arby's just down the road. So I got up and went. Ummmm.... yummy! And withing a half hour of eating, my headache was gone and a feeling of well being infused throughout my body. When I went back to bed, it was like someone had lit the furnace in my body. I had been shivering underneath all the covers for the last week, but instead I felt great and warm with only the sheet and thin blanket. This morning my blood sugar is up to 129, and I feel great! It's seems that my body is unhappy with me if when my blood sugar gets below 120. I'm going to have to email my doctor and ask him about this.

2:00PM: Open Gym this morning (20 minutes on the elliptical for me) then breakfast was egg whites, whole grain English muffin with jelly and a fruit sorbet.
For our hikes, I did the advanced hike Gila and Holly did the intermediate hike Paradise Ridge. I was originally going to do the Paradise Ridge hike as well, but got talked into doing the advance hike. I'm glad I did, even if my knee is now bothering me. The two hikes actually overlap a little bit, Holly's group hiked up to Turtle rock then back around to where their van was parked. My hike, they dropped us off on one side of the mountain, we hiked up to Scout's Cave, then along the side of a canyon, up the mountain and then fallowing down along the mountain ridge until we got down to Turtle Rock then on to where the van picked us up. Both of us had great hikes and got good photos. If you look closely at the photo of the canyon here to the right, you can see the trail running along the ledge above that upper dropoff, and to give a sense of scale, those little colored dots on the trail is the other advanced group following along behind us. The picture below and to the right is when we were at that point and you can see the peak we climbed up to (where the photo on the right and the one of me immediate above to the left were taken) in the background. Back at fitness Ridge, Sharon lead us through another "funner" Aquacise class. For lunch we had a great potato-parsnip soup, some strange couscous balls and a Greek salad.

6:20PM: Another afternoon of working our butts (and other flabby body parts) off! Started with Circuit Training with Cam, then I went over to the other gym for Sharon's Kickboxing class while Holly stayed for a second circuit. (The kickboxing bothers my knee, but we can work around that. Holly's arm makes kickboxing impossible for her.) Then we finished it all up with "Gentle Stretch." The call it gentle stretch to suck everybody into the class because if the called it Extreme Stretch or Severe Stretch, no one would show. But it is actually one of my favorite classes. You feel so good afterwards. Dinner was a chicken teriyaki bowl with a peach cobbler desert. Yummy. Now I'm going to go down to the hot tub to soak and read for a while.

My doctor replied to my email: "If you are on a 1200 Cal diet per day then go ahead and stop the metformin. Between the weight loss and the low calorie count your sugar will not go dangerously high without the medication." So I'll cut it out and see if that will help with the headaches.

I can't do it any more...

6:20AM: I can't do it any more... I woke up in the middle of the night absolutely starving and with a splitting headache. I thought that My blood sugar might be dangerously low and realized that if it was there was nothing I could do about it since I didn't have any glucose, or anything sugary to raise my blood sugar if it was. I couldn't sleep with the headache, so I got up and took my blood sugar level. At 12:11AM it was 116, so not dangerously low, actually what should be "normal". I layed back cown and tried to sleep, but couldn't with the hunger pangs and the headache. Finally around 12:30AM I remembered that there was an apple in my bag that I had taken along on the hikes that I hadn't eaten, so I got up and ate that. Didn't help any with the headache, but it eased the hunger pangs enough that I was able to eventually fall asleep.

Then this morning Holly got up early before the alarm, so when the alarm turned went off she turned it off and turned on the TV. I just couldn't come up with the energy to roll out of the covers. Holly whispered a few things that I couldn't hear over the TV and went to this mornings gym. I got up to pee and take my blood sugar (110) and decided to write this in the hope that it would wake me up. Instead, I'm still tired, hungry and have a splitting headache plus now feeling depressed. I've realized that in order to lose weight and get healthy, I'll never be able to feel full or enjoy a real meal again, and will have to constantly torture myself with exercise instead of being able to relax. If it was just me here, I think I would just pack up my stuff and go home, forget about all this health stuff. I never felt better or healthier in my life then just before they diagnosed me with diabetes. Since then, I've felt nothing but worse in the attempts to control it. I think I'm just going to go curl up in bed again and hope this headache will go away.

3:00PM: I managed to sleep most of the day away. I was meaing to get up for Aquacise, but managed to sleep through that class. Holly asked me if I wanted to go to lunch but I asked her to make sure I was awake for the 2:30 exercise class. I managed to get myself out of bed around 1:20 and took my blood sugar (99) when Holly came back from lunch carrying food and a message. She was told by Sharon that if I didn't eat I wasn't allowed into exercise class. Since I still feel nauseous from my headache, that meant no exercise for me today. Which to me also means that if I don't get a chance to burn any calories today, then no dinner for me tonight either. Holly put the sandwich in the cooler and left the soup on the dresser. I fed the soup to Oscar the Grouch but I'll let Holly throw the sandwich out when it goes rotten in the cooler. I went back to bed for a little while then got up to blog this. Holly's been having a good day though. She went on the intermediate hike, which seems to have turned into a little more of an advanced hike, and has/is doing all the classes. Oh, and I just took my blood sugar, and it's the best I've seen since I've started taking readings, an 86!

6:05PM: I soaked and read in the hot tub for a while then came back up to shower before dinner. Luckily Holly left for dinner before I got the dry heaves or she would have gotten even more worried and concerned about me. But i really think it's either a reaction to having low blood sugar or an accumulated allergic reaction to all the garlic or something else in the food. And I should have saved myself the effort of going down to dinner, except the itsy bitsy little desert was good. The main course was an attempt at a Mexican lasagna. Except the only resemblance to anything Mexican was some soggy tortillas mixed in with the other stuff. No spices or anything to give it any flavor. One bite was enough for me to declare it DOA. And having a huge stinking pile of broccoli next to it didn't help it's appeal any. So besides being hungry, having a headache and feeling nauseas, I also feel yucky because I didn't get to work out today. Blood sugar is 95.