TheBodyShopSpa Week 3

This is a repost of the emails I sent out during my third week at TheBodyShopSpa (now Fitness Ridge) from Oct. 3rd to Oct. 9th of 2004. (Though with only a selection of the photos from those emails.)

Day 15: Oct. 03 Grand Canyon
Wow, what a busy day. It's only been a day and I already miss the wonderful people I've spent the last week with. I think that may be the toughest part about the four weeks here, each week meeting great people and becoming friends, then having to say goodbye. I've already met some really friendly people in this week's group. In photo a14.jpg, from left to right you'll see Laurie, Robin and Nancy. In photo a11.jpg, Robin and Nancy are talking to Michelle. Looking at the photo made me realize that none of the photos that I've sent out have shown Michelle, so those of you who are receiving these letters and haven't been here can now put a face to the name.

I started the day off at 5:30AM with my weight-in. I only lost three more pounds this last week, so I still have a few more to go to break the 300lb mark. :-( I lost two inches from my chest, 1/2 inch from my waist, 3/4 inch from my hip, 1/2 inch from my thigh, nothing from calf or arm and 0.9% body fat. (which actually matches the three pounds) I really would like to start losing more from around the waste! We'll see how this next week goes.

After weight-in, I went back to bed for two hours then got up to go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. First I stopped at the Sconeworks restaurant for breakfast of bacon and eggs on a whole wheat scone with orange juice. Yummmmm. I took the southern route (highway 59/389 to 89A to 67 to get to the Grand Canyon. A pleasant ride with the cliff faces from buttes and mesas on the north side (photo a01.jpg) and rolling desert prairie on the south. As you get close to the Grand Canyon, enter the forest and watch fall creep up on you as you ascend in altitude and the fall colors break out in the forest. (photo a10.jpg) I got to the canyon, visited the gift shop and started wandering towards the lodge and the view. And there was the classic western saloon, complete with customers playing cards while enjoying their drinks. So I stopped in and got a North Rim Stout (photo a03.jpg). I got it in a plastic cup and took it to the canyon side of the lodge and drank it sitting on a nice wooden bench overlooking the Grand Canyon. Then I walked the paths around the lodge area, going out onto Bright Angel Observation Point and enjoying the scenery. The canyon was a little hazy, and the north rim isn't as impressive as the south rim, but it was definitely worth the trip. Maybe on the way home, instead of getting on 15S, I should take the long way around the canyon and visit the south rim again, then take 40W to 15S. Hmm. I'll have to think about that. It will turn a seven hour trip into a fourteen hour trip, but it might just be worth doing. After wandering the trails I stopped at the little deli at the lodge and had a Greek salad with no dressing and a tuna salad sandwich with onion and tomato on whole wheat bun. Of the two meals, the bacon was probably the worst thing I ate. But I can't see giving up bacon/sausage/ham/etc. completely. I guess I'll need to figure out just how awful the breakfast meats are and how to limit and compensate for them in my diet. Maybe just limit them to once a week? I'll have to think on that. On the way back, I took the northern route through Zion park and got stuck behind old geezers wanting to do 10 miles below the speed limit on a two lane rode all the way back. It was definitely very aggravating.

I got back just in time for dinner (whole grain spaghetti with marinara sauce and pumpkin "pie") and met four of the new guests. Three I mentioned above and one other lady named Paula who arrived as we finished dinner and had to check in, so she didn't join us in out after dinner jaunt to Pioneer Park on the hill overlooking St. George. A very interesting little park, Nancy had been here before back in April and found out about it then, so when we were talking about what to do after dinner she suggested this. Definitely a great idea, I wish I had known about this place the last two weeks!

I should probably definitely learn how to correctly spell "probably" and "definitely" correctly. Every time I spell check, I'm always having to correct those two words. At least I misspell them consistently. My subconsciousness is always sticking an "i" before the "ly" in "probably" and an "a" instead of "i" between the "n" and "t" and no "e" before "ly" in "definitely". I wonder why? I must have failed spelling the week those were taught back in grade school. :-)


Day 16: Oct. 04 Snow Canyon
Today started with our hike in Snow Canyon.. Instead of the route we've taken the last two weeks, Cameron decided that we could take a more difficult and strenuous (if a little shorter distance wise) route. This route entailed a fare amount of climbing and rock scrambling, as the attached photos show. Everyone finished the hike tired, sore and hungry. I think everyone had their midmorning fruit after the hike, the first I've seen that in the three weeks. Then off to a nice relaxing Tai Chi class. After lunch was Ballworks class. Those exercises don't seem quite as bad as they felt the first week, but I don't think that I'm going to go rush out and buy one for home use. Aquacise is always one of my favorite classes. The water just makes it possible to concentrate on the exercise and stretches without having to struggle against gravity to just get in position for the exercises. I will have to try to keep up some of those exercises in the apartment complex pool when I get back. After Aquacise I went upstairs and got on the elliptical machine for a half hour. I'm going to try to do that each day for a half hour to 90 minutes. I think it will be a good thing, that way I can get in a stretch of aerobic exercise at my max fat burning rate each day. In all the other exercises that we do each day, I usually end up significantly above my max O2 heart rate for a good portion of the workout.

We got another guest today. This guy called this morning from where he was visiting in LA and decided to come to the spa for a few weeks. So he was here for dinner. A very interesting individual, it sounds like he's tried every fad diet and weight loss program out there.

Today's wild and crazy meals: Breakfast: Fruit, Tofu French Toast + and extra banana Snack: Pear Lunch: Salad, Black Bean soup, Macaroni and Tofu Cheese Dinner: Salad, mixed vegetables (not eaten), Tamale Casserole and Brownie


Day 17: Oct. 05 Red Cliff
Today's hike was to Red Cliff. This starts in a desert reserve and wanders down to the entrance to a beautiful canyon. A great five and a half mile hike where my heart rate stayed near my fat burning 120 pulse almost the whole time.

After lunch, Nancy and I went to the Johnson Dinosaur tracks. A nice quick little trip and visit to see some interesting geological history. The impressive dinosaur tracks are actually on the under side of the rocks and are natural casts of the dinosaur tracks on an ancient lake shoreline. They are currently building a museum that will have much better exhibits and be able to show off more of the tracks.

The classes today were Pilates, Weight Circuit and Aquacise. I then followed that with 60 minutes on the elliptical machine.

Today's food supply: Breakfast: fruit and breakfast burrito. I don't care for this breakfast burrito and only ate a few bites, so I also had a banana and apple. Snack: Apple Lunch: salad, zucchini soup and tofu hot dog. Dinner: salad, Lasagna and banana cake






Day 18: Oct. 06 Volcano
Today started off very tired... my allergies bothered me and woke me up last night. Supposedly the sage is blooming and putting a lot of pollen into the air. So the day started off with eyes barely wedged open. The hike today was "Volcano". From the description of it's difficulty, the majority of the group decided to do the paved hike instead. Nancy, Robin and I were the only ones to hike Volcano. A fairly difficult hike that involved a lot of climbing, but not especially difficult. As we started the hike there was a skeleton of some small animal scattered to the side of the trail. What a classic image of the dessert. The view from the mountain top and along the ridge to the cinder cone volcano was amazing. The volcano side is very difficult to walk on due to all the loose volcanic rock, so we didn't climb to the top of the cone, but just slipped and struggled our way down the slope. About a quarter of a mile from the end of the hike, as we were hiking down a sandy creek bottom, I placed my foot on top of a rock embedded in the soil. As I stepped with the other foot, I heard a loud POP and felt an intense pain in my right foot. I'm not sure just what happened, whether I pulled a muscle in the middle of my foot, or a tendon, or some bones shifted against each other or two tense muscles were laying wrong against each other and shifted or what but there isn't any swelling and I am able to walk on the foot with only the occasional pain and a constant dull soreness. We got back to the hotel from the hike at about 11:30 so we missed the yoga class. After lunch was Kickboxing and Aquacise. My foot would only bother me when I shifted my weight onto the ball of my foot, so it only interfered with my doing the left kicks. Michelle was pretty sympathetic since she just hurt her heel so she didn't give me a hard time about not really doing those kicks. And of course it didn't bother me during Aquacise. Afterwords I didn't even bother attempting to do the elliptical machine but went and soaked in the hotel's hot tub for a half hour instead. After dinner, Dr. Brad gave the lecture. I was supposed to have a massage appointment at 6PM, but there was some confusion and the masseuse was told 7PM so I ended up being able to attend Dr. Brad's lecture after all. Very interesting on the immune system and allergies. To reduce everything to just the recommendations, he recommends that you take 6 grams of Perilla Seed Oil, 3 - 10 grams of Omega 3 Fatty Acids (fish oil, flax seed oil, etc), and/or 400-800 IU's of Vitamin E each day especially during times of seasonal allergies to help prevent allergic responses to allergens. After his lecture I went to my 7PM massage. How absolutely wonderful. Jane Anne is trained in reflexology and spent over a half hour just working on my feet. She couldn't feel anything swollen or broken in my foot, and wow! did she make them feel better. Every muscle in my body feels so much better now. I don't think that I'm going to have any trouble sleeping tonight.

Today's chow: Breakfast: fruit and blueberry buckwheat pancakes Lunch: salad, lentil/potato soup, and garbanzo bean salad sandwich Dinner: salad, Scieten "chicken", cabbage with banana "cream" pie.



Day 19: Oct. 07 Stop Sign
When I woke up this morning, my foot was still feeling very sore and I wasn't too sure if I should hike at all on it. But when I put on my hiking shoes, the foot felt a little bit better so I decided I should do a hike. On the other hand, I didn't want to push it and possible damage the foot. So rather then go back to Camelback to doing the rappelling and the hike there, I asked to do the paved trail with the other people who weren't doing the real hike. It turned out that Tami (who usually organizes this hike) wasn't going today and that only one other guest here was doing a paved walk. Cameron drove Paula and me to the start of the walking path for the "Stop Sign" hike. Paula walked the first mile of the trail and was picked up there by Cameron and taken back to the hotel. I did the complete Stop Sign which is 5 miles and ascends a thousand feet. About a quarter of a mile into the hike, my foot started feeling a lot better. This hike gets it's name from the end point being at a stop sign (photo stop9.jpg) at the intersection of highway 300 (which goes through Snow Canyon Park) and highway 18. It's a pleasant hike through the canyon on the bike trail then the highway. At one point I had to detour off the path a little way to go around where they were shooting an exercise video. Lots of pretty scenery and wild life along the trail. I saw a rabbit, several unidentified fast moving rodents, small lizards, and a bunch of birds that seemed to be afraid of heights. They would take off from a bush flying really low and fast only to disappear into another bush. Along the way I would pass many of my current nemesis, the flowering sage brush. Beautiful looking but really bothering my allergies. At the end of the hike I wandered around a bit taking some photos of the flowers and scenery while I was waiting for Cam to pick me up. I was squatting down taking a photo of some flowers when I saw Cameron drive by! So I climbed up on top of some lava and sat there enjoying the view until he came back after not finding me hiking along the road.

When I got back to the hotel, there was about an hour until Pilates so I got in my car and drove to Walgreens and got some Clariton, Vitamin E and more Omega-3 supplements per Dr. Brad's recommendations last night for allergies. I couldn't find any Perilla Seed Oil, so I'll have to ask him on Monday where to get that. When I got back into the hotel room and changed my foot started bothering me again. Over the next few hours the foot bothered me less and less. At the gym, Michelle and I were waiting for the rest of the group to get back from their hike when she got a phone call saying that the van had broken down. The group was retrieved and taken directly to the gym for class. Pilates class is an interesting example of where I am physically. There's a lot that I couldn't do two and a half weeks ago, both exercise and flexibility wise and yet that means that I can do things that show me how I'm still so far from being in shape yet. Both encouraging and discouraging at the same time. After lunch was weight Circuit Training and Aquacise. After that, for a combination of being tired and concern for my foot I decided not to do any extra workout but to soak in the hot tub. Thankfully, my foot feels pretty good right now and I am ready to do the full hike tomorrow. I don't know what I pulled or hurt in the foot but it seems that all it needed was a little pampering to fix itself.

Today's culinary feasts: Breakfast: Fruit Smoothie and fake Canadian Bacon on Whole grain English muffin. Lunch: salad, Celery soup, and Chili (which I spiced up with some of the peppers that Brandi had brought in for me from her garden.) Dinner: salad, sweet potato, Lentil Loaf, and pineapple tofu "cheesecake" Wow! A whole day's meal plan without anything bad or even so-so but all really yummy stuff.





Day 20: Oct. 08 Slots
I forgot to set my alarm last night, but luckily I woke up about 6:20AM on my own, so I was able to get up in time to get my act together before breakfast. The van had broken down yesterday (word is that a spark plug flew out of the engine) so we went to the hike in the little red van and the guides in another car. We went to Slots today. Another great hike with wonderful scenery. We even caught a glimpse of a hawk flying through the canyon. I saw a rock formation that I hadn't noticed before, it looks like a huge crocodile sunning itself on top of the sandstone rock.(photo sl4.jpg) Or maybe I've been out here in the desert so long that I'm beginning to see things? The hike started off seeming much easier then in past weeks with much more energy then in the past and able to keep up with the group, which I was very glad about since I was a little concerned about whether my foot was really OK or not. Then about half way through the hike it felt like someone had just shut off my fuel supply. All of a sudden my legs felt like lead, I had trouble keeping up and I felt just as out of shape as I did the previous weeks. Everyone was real nice about it, but it really disappointed me that I'm still so badly out of shape. Ashley had the excellent suggestion that I eat the fruit in my bag to restore my energy, but it didn't seem to have any effect. The hike was very enjoyable anyway. If I was a little disappointed in my hiking performance, I was equally pleased with the Yoga class. It's one of the few places where I can really see and feel a significant change from where I started three weeks ago. I did notice that I had trouble keeping my balance standing on my right foot but that seemed to be a resulting weakness from my minor injury to my right foot. Otherwise I find it amazing to be able to do things that I found impossible 19 days ago. I think that I will have to find some yoga classes back home to keep improving and not lose that increased flexibility. That may also be helped by the Pilates classes too, but I'm not sure how I feel about following up on those. I'll see what I think after another week.

Treading class in the afternoon left me a little confused about my performance. I worked out just as hard as the previous two weeks and actually set the elliptical machine to a slightly harder level. Even so, my heart rate never got to the same levels as the previous weeks. I was only able to get my heart rate up to 144-145 no matter how hard I pushed myself, and I don't know why. On the good side, my heart rate was a little quicker to recover and come down. Aquacise felt good afterword even if I was exhausted from the Treading. No extra exercising today. I was lucky to have the energy to crawl back to my room. I got Robin, Laurie and Nancy's photos from this week and put them on a CD for Nancy and Robin, who are going to be leaving for their flight right after the Zion trip tomorrow. I'll put together CDs for everyone else tomorrow afternoon. Michelle told us that Tami got in an accident in the little red van. Luckily she's all right although the van is totaled, but vans can be replaced (in fact it all ready had already been replaced by a new van this afternoon) but people can't. Before dinner Michelle gave out certificates to the guests who are finishing this week, and presented me with a really cool shirt that says "I hiked a hundred miles in Southern Utah" So begins the hardest part of the Body Shop Spa... saying goodbye to the great people that I keep meeting here. It's stunning how many really amazing people I'm meeting here, both guests and all the people who work for the spa.

Our body's fuel sources for the day... Breakfast: fruit and cold cereal or oatmeal Snack: banana Lunch: salad, carrot soup (yeach!) and a vegetarian burrito (doctored with hot peppers and salsa) Dinner: salad, coleslaw, Boca burger and apple crisp


Day 21: Oct. 09 Zion National Park
It's the end of week 3 and what a lot of work and sweat these three weeks have been, but at the same time very satisfying. Today we went to Zion National Park again. Most of the group was going in separate cars for several reasons, so three of us who had planned on just going with Cameron in the van decided to join the others in their cars so Cam wouldn't have to drive us all the way to Zion for no reason. I rode with Nancy and Robin in their rental car that they were taking to Zion so they could get back to the hotel in time to leave for Las Vegas to catch their flight. The sunrise this morning was exceptionally vivid and colorful, making the scenery on the ride to Zion even more scenic then normal. The excellent company also helped make the ride extra nice, I've never met two people who laugh more in my life. At the parking lot we all met up, but Mike, Chas and Christine decided to wonder off and do their own thing. So Nancy, Robin, Paul, Laurie and I took the shuttle up to the Zion Lodge. Laurie and Paul went horseback riding while Nancy, Robin and I hiked the Middle, Upper and Lower Emerald Pool Trails. A nice little hike with plenty of very beautiful scenery. At one time I would have found it a tiring hike, but after the hikes with the Body Shop Spa it seemed like a quick walk around the block. I saw one of the most amusing signs (photo zi4a.jpg) and talked Robin and Nancy into pretending to roll a boulder onto the trail below for a picture.(photo zi4.jpg) We then met Paul and Laurie at the Lodge gift shop at 11AM to get together to go back to the cars and have a picnic lunch. After lunch Nancy, Robin and I left while Paul and Laurie went back into the park. We stopped at the Virgin Trading Post (and for those with sick and twisted minds it's not a place to trade your virgins, it's a little gift shop with a petting zoo and touristy photo props in Virgin, Utah) to feed the animals and take some photos.

Back at the hotel, we copied the photos we took today for each other then said our farewells. All these goodbyes are beginning to make me really sad. Over the last few weeks I've met some of the nicest people ever. I hope I'm able to get together with these new friends again in the future.

During the rest of the afternoon I went to the Health Deli (www.healthdeli.com) to check it out and meet the people who have been making my meals for the last three weeks. It's a nice little Vegan restaurant and the people who run it are really nice. After that I was feeling really hungry and didn't think I could wait for dinner so I went across the street to the Health Nut Natural Food Market and tried some of their strawberry/chocolate swirl oatmeal "ice cream". Very delicious. It's a shame that it's not also low calorie so I could have eaten more. To fill the rest of the afternoon's time I started to watch "Once Upon a Time In Mexico" and will finish the movie after I finish this letter. At dinner Laurie and Paul gave me a cool little trilobite fossil that they ran across in one of the gift shop to say thanks for the photo CD's. That was really nice of them and I'll be sorry to have to say goodbye to them tomorrow too.

The feeding trough contained the following today: Breakfast: Fruit and a blueberry bran muffin Snack: mixed nuts Lunch: veggies, pita bread, hummus, apple and a whole grain fig "newton". Snack 2: strawberry/chocolate swirl oatmeal "ice cream" Dinner: salad, Thai vegetables on brown rice and chocolate "mousse"