I’ve paid my web host to set up a subdomain. This means that you can block images from this subdomain if you so choose, without blocking every single image hosted on my website. That means you can read my comics even if you block these images.

I also set up a little handy button right here that is completely and totally unremarkable so you can block the images without scrolling any further down the page and looking at pictures that might be problematic for you.

If you’re on a PC, you can right-click and block all the images on this subdomain. If you are on a Mac, hit CTRL-click, and then you can block the images. The subject line will always stay the same so I am hoping that will serve as significant warning to scroll past. If it’s JUST the images that bother you, then feel free to read!

Okay! Now that that’s done, on to the actual fitnessy stuff.

started doing some good requirements that I really like. For example, she started drinking more water. I made a pledge to drink the required 8 cups of water a day…before I found out that they meant 8 8-oz cups. I well exceed that in a normal day, just from going to the water cooler at work! Our cups at work are 16 oz! So I was thinking I would have to drink 16 oz. eight times, but no! Just four times, which is way less water than I drink in a day. But I have been keeping better tabs on my water intake.

Moving put a damper on my exercising, and I can’t go home and exercise at lunch anymore, but I did a heck of a lot of packing and moving boxes and unpacking, and I did make sure I walked a lot, so I am betting that I got an equivalent amount of exercise. Plus, I am freaking covered with box-moving bruises (you can see a lovely purple one on my ribcage below) I am pledging to but myself either an elliptical or an exercise bike for the new apartment; I think it would be a good investment, and I have room for it now. But I do need to get back into doing exercising and stretching this week. I moved into a fourth-floor apartment, and even though it has an elevator, I’ve been trying to make myself walk the stairs as much as possible. And my new subway is an elevated train so I walk stairs there, too! The biggest problem is that that doesn’t help my arms, and my arms are really what need the most help.

I’ve also been committing myself to eating dinners I prepare myself, now that I have a real separate kitchen with prep space. I have been making food ahead so I can just pull it out when I’m hungry. Also, I made blueberry sorbet which is freaking delicious. The other thing I have to work on is my lunchtime meals, since I can’t go home for lunch anymore. It would be both more economical and healthier to prep lunch at home and bring it, but it won’t be as tasty, fresh or convenient. So I’ll have to figure that one out. In the meantime, I peeled carrots ahead of time so I can munch on them whenever I want, instead of buying the pre-peeled ones from the store.

One thing I need to work on is eating more protein. I eat a good amount of veggies as it is but I often forget the protein. I also need to start walking at lunch, I think, even if I have nowhere to go.

Pics this week are in new apartment! And once again, if you don’t feel you can look at the pics, you can block them without blocking anything else on my site.

Also, these pictures were taken today, Tuesday, not Friday like they should have been!

Some high points of last week–

I flt increasingly comfortable stretching and more flexible overall! I think the highlight of the week for me came on Thursday when I did a routine I hadn’t done in about two weeks. This routine involve toe-touching, and the last time I did it, I could not really get my hands down past my shins without bending my knees. This time, though, my hands went flat on the floor with no problem! I was really proud and excited about that. It was the first quantifiable sign of progress for me!

I also, on Friday morning, officially met my weight goal, which was to hit under 140 lbs. Yeah, then I gorged so much this weekend I gained 2 lbs back, but since weight loss isn’t my main concern, I’m not sweatin’ it. I just felt like I should say so for those of you who are following my fitness adventure and thinking about starting your own. I know it probably doesn’t sound like a ton of weight, but I lost approximately five lbs in four weeks without changing my diet at all, and only making exercise part of my daily life, and I think that is a great thing to know!

Fortunately, I found a great new apartment that I love! And it is much cheaper than where I am living now. Unfortunately, there will be no more walking home for lunch, and that means I need to rethink my exercise schedule.

I also started doing ten minutes of stretching right before bed, which seems to be helping with the restlessness I described last week.

Some routines are still very hard, but other ones I feel like they are much easier than they were when I started. The stretching is something that I enjoy and is so easy! My flexibility is pretty good– If I sit with one leg stretched out, I can old onto my big toe with the fingers of the opposite hand. That’s better than it was when I started.

Still no really visible signs of toning, as far as I can see, but the fact that the routines are seeming easier is a plus for me. I’m also getting higher scores in a lot of the Wii Fit games.

I’ve lost about 2 lbs since I started my exercise. The Wii Fit, ever the overbearing wannabe trainer, thinks I need to lose six pounds. I disagree and will be happy if I maintain my pants/dress size so I don’t have to buy new ones.

Of course, my weight frequently fluctuates up a pound or so in the course of a day. The Wii Fit thinks this is a reason to scold me and tries to tell me I need to think about my calorie intake. I am starting to think maybe I should skip the body test portion and just play the games.

Finally, this week’s pictures:

Also, my good friend whirled has also started recording her fitness activity! You can read hers here! Go, Whirled!

It seems like I’ve been doing this for longer than two weeks! A lot of the routines seem easier than they did in the beginning. Even though I can’t follow along perfectly– or even well- yet, I actually feel like I’m not hopeless or lost, and nothing feels like it’s out of the realm of “ever possible.” Two days this past week, I had barely broken a sweat after ten minutes of working out, so I did another ten minute routine. The third day I tried that, though, I was too tired and achey after one to try to do more.

I’m also getting significantly better at several of the Wii Fit routines! The one problem with the Wii Fit is it automatically weighs you and uses your BMI as a milestone for how well you’re doing. I wish there were other ways to set to measure your progress! I am not really interested in losing weight, but it’s annoying for the machine to keep telling me I’m not meeting my milestones because I’m not losing any weight. Well, I am, but not as much as the Wii thinks I should. My weight is down about a pound after a week and a half.

I have been walking a lot outdoors, lately, too. Today, I walked for about two and a half hours, not including the approximate hour I spent walking between home and work twice. I’m impressed I walked as much as I did!

A lot of people say that working out regularly gives them more energy and makes them sleep better, though, and I don’t feel that at all. In fact, I’ve been sleeping worse and having a harder time waking up in the morning since I started.

I think that is all the update for this week!

I haven’t played the Ravin’Rabbids game (I have the first one and enjoy it immensely, but I have been enjoying the Wii Fit, although that thing is seriously all about the insults. Man! And it makes this sound when you step on it like you’re hurting it or something. But the games are fun and extremely challenging.

I don’t think that one full week of exercising produces many visible results, but I wasn’t expecting it to. But by the end of the week, many of the exercises I tried to do the first day that were too difficult, and that I was certain would be impossible forever, were much easier by the end of the week. Some of them were still really difficult, and make me feel like a weakling, because they were beginner exercises and I couldn’t for the life of me even do them the “modified” way that was supposed to be easier. I still can’t do all of them, and some of them I can only do the modified way, but ten minutes feels like a short time and not an unending amount of time now. So I think I am improving.

Here are this past Friday’s photos for comparison to last week’s– as I said before, not much discernable difference. But I’m waiting till there are a bunch of them and in a few months it will look awesome!

I am very much against dieting. I don’t do it. I think that, when you’re discussing people like me, who have relatively healthy relationships with food, at least (I know it’s different for other people), out bodies tell us what kind of food we want to eat and it’s because those are the foods that have the nutrients we need. I rarely eat fast food or red meat, and most of the food I eat in my home is vegan and raw, but I don’t limit myself to a specific diet. I rarely drink soda and save it for when I have a headache or allergies, and when I drink sugary juice, I drink it half-and-half with seltzer. So my eating habits are already pretty healthy.

But I don’t exercise at all– I mean, other than the ten blocks I walk each way to work every day (that’s about a 12 minute walk for those of you who aren’t familiar with NYC blocks). And my upper body strength is abysmal. So I decided I needed to do something about it. I don’t want to be one of those people who didn’t exercise when she could have and realizes at fifty that I have health problems I could have prevented in my thirties just by taking better care of my self.

I recently turned my Netflix account back on after nearly five years, and discovered that I can get fitness videos on Play Instantly. I also got my Wii set back up for Play Instantly, and that means one of two things:

1) I can play more Wii games, which are more active than some of my other stay-at-home activities
2) I can use fitness videos

So, starting Friday, I have been walking home from work at lunch, doing ten minutes of beginner fitness video workouts (ones that are designed to be short stretches and such), eating lunch at home (cheaper than eating at work!), and walking back. I’ve also been playing more of the more active Wii games I own. This adds close to a half-hour of walking to my daily schedule, plus the exercise in between, and at night.

I don’t know if it will really have an effect, but I’m certainly willing to try. It’s been nearly a year since I stopped using shampoo and that was an excellent personal improvement. It seems like it’s about time to fit in another one!

I’ve decided I’m going to take progress pictures so I can see if there’s any visible progress from my increased exercise. I’m going to take them every Friday. This is sort of my way of holding myself to the self-improvement goal, because while I don’t really have a goal of losing a lot of weight, I do want to see more muscle tone on my body and an overall healthier look. I also feel like this is the kind of thing that people don’t often talk about in real, visual terms. Lots of people feel like they have awkward bits on their bodies no matter what shape their bodies take, and we’re all too used to seeing airbrushed models. I feel like the more we get used to seeing normal bodies, the better off we’ll all be in the long run. I’m a little, I don’t know, apprehensive about this, because part of me feels a little weird putting up pictures of myself in shorts and a sports bra where everyone in the world can see, but hey, it’s more clothes than I would be wearing at the beach. So here’s Week 1:

Tea Gets Fit Week 1--Front

Tea Gets Fit Week 1--Side

And no, this isn’t going to preclude my usual food posts. Like I said, I don’t do dieting. Plus, I just made a quart of Earl Grey ice cream and it’s in the fridge freezing.

A few people have asked me lately about the whole shampoo-free thing. So, just so you know, yes, I am still doing it, and I have used commercial shampoo exactly twice in the past almost-year: once when I got some icky goo in my hair, and another time when I wanted to put henna in it and needed to shampoo it first.

Instead, I’ve been washing my hair with honey once a week, or a mixture of honey and vinegar if it’s really dirty) conditioning it every day with silicone-free conditioner (Trader Joe’s has really cheap silicone-free conditioner, btw), combing a little oil into it (castor oil, jojoba oil and vegetable glycerine).

I have literally not had a bad hair day since I’ve started doing this, with the exception of October in Louisiana, when it didn’t matter how much conditioner or oil I put in my hair, because my hair wanted to look like this and there was just no convincing it otherwise.

Anyway, today I got the first haircut I’ve had since November, 2008.

Before!

After!

I don’t know if people can tell that it’s any different! It looked much, much more different in the salon but the weather on the way home was so blustery that by the time I got in, it looked more like this again. So I put a little shea butter and oil in it and there you go.

Sharon: On Thursday, I ate Caribbean beans and rice from a package and they were delicious and I realy enjoyed it. And I occasionally eat those for dinner when I get home late so that wasn’t anything unusual for me, but I was glad that I keep them in the house. Both Thursday and Friday, I was in interviews, so I ordered salads from a deli. It was a little hard, because all of their regular salads have meat or eggs or cheese on them, so I had to get them to make me a salad. So I ordred their regular spinach salad without bacon or egg. And with ceci beans. But when it came, it had kidney beans, because I don’t think they know what ceci beans are. Because the next day I ordered the same thing with chick peas and I got them. Both days I ate bananas– oh, no, actually. One day one of the other principals brought bagels from up the street, and I ate a plain bagel because I called the bagel place to find out and they said that they don’t use eggs or dairy in their plain bagels.

Friday night for dinner, I made fried zucchini with hummus and pita chips. And that was yummy. And I did the fried zucchini the way PC does the eggplant.

(PC is my friend, Paul Reilly, who is the executive chef of Encore in Denver, CO. Encore is a restaurant committed to using sustainable practices and local, green & organic products.)

That’s in half-flour, half cornstarch. It was really nice.

I thought the pizzas were good. I like to make unusual pizzas anyway. I do think both of those pizzas would have been beter with cheese on them. I thought they were both yummy.

I’m not likely to do it again for a week, but I would certainly do it on and off. I do think that it made me much more cognizant of what I put in my mouth. I used to be really careful about that stuff, and I’ve gotten away from it, so it was a really good reminder to me. I don’t normally eat food that has chemicals, but it did elevate my awareness.

Oh, and I lost weight, which I didn’t expect. It didn’t even occur to me, and when John said he expected to lose weight, I…

John:Yeah, but I got a swollen knee, that’s why I didn’t lose weight.

Sharon At the beginning of the week, I missed meat, and now I don’t miss it at all. I don’t even care about eating it. I do think that even though I don’t eat a lot of dairy, it’s a toss-up between cheese and eggs. But since I was hungry for an egg this morning…that was probably why!

Other than that I I just think that with all the focus there has been lately on things like trans fats, while I didn’t think that all of that was necessary, I do think that better labeling in restaurants and stuff is important. For anybody who wants to make any food choices should know what’s in their food and not have to be embarrassed or made to feel inconvenienced in order to find out what’s in their food.

I think [the idea that some companies are permitted to keep their "secret formulas" off the label is] just plain stupid. You should be able to keep the amount of the ingredient, but not the ingredients, secret. I personally don’t think that dyes should be allowed in any food products. That’s just part of my personal belief. There is nothing about dye that enhances the quality or taste of a food.

I think before someone does this, they should actually plan their meals for the week. I just went to the store and tried to find things that were vegan and that was stupid. You should get a cookbook or go online and plan the first three or four days and what you need. I think if you did it like that, you would be more successful.

My mom really liked both the tempeh and the vegan bacon we ate! She had never had either before and she thought the tempeh was really nice baked on the pizza because it got all crispy. She said that the vegan bacon didn’t really taste like bacon but had a nice flavor and nice crunch.

Here are some pictures from our vegan pizza feast on Saturday night.

Southwestern Pizza!

My mother is already asleep, so I talked to my father about his vegan experiences this week. He said he continued to eat carrots and grapes while at work.

John:
I’m trying to think if there’s anything exotic I did.

I went to the store and bought Cheerios with sugar as a snack. Thursday, I had a diet soda at birthday party. I don’t recall eating anything. I was getting tired of it.

Friday, finished all the carrots and all the grapes. More cereal. had dinner but forget what it was already. We had zucchini strips and something else and hummus and chips, which was fine. It was good.

Breakfast I had orange juice and we went shopping. I got a diet Dr. Pepper. I tried to sneak pretzels at Kitchen Connection but they moved to a different outlet and then it’s all a blur.

Today I came to see my parents. As a gift for their last day on this assignment, I brought them a vegan cookbook, The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick Goudreau. We made variations on two pizzas in the book, a beet pizza and a southwestern pizza. We also bought some prepared frozen vegan egg rolls as an appetizer, but they were incredibly bland and I thought kind of inedible. As I told my mom, I felt like they were vegan food cooked by people who had never eaten vegan food. There were no seasonings in them at all. Or, at least, it tasted like there weren’t.

The pizzas we made had the following toppings (there will be pics tomorrow):

Beets
Turnips
Potatoes
Arugula tapenade
Tempeh

Pinto beans
Vegan soy bacon strips
Vegan cashew “sour cream” (which I made from scratch based on a recipe in the book)
Avocado
Homemade salsa
Dried chipotle

So that was dinner. Yum! Now back to our regularly scheduled comments from my father.

John: Dinner tonight was pretty good. The pizza was dry. I’m getting tired of– there are certain things I like in my diet that I’m not getting. Butter, cheese, and milk being some of them.

(He is not really, but he said that that way he can eat the vegan ice cream I bought him tomorrow)

When I called, they were eating dinner, which was Vegan pulled pork from “It’s All Good,” a company that makes ready-made vegan products. I have had their beef skewers and thought they were delicious.

Sharon: This wouldn’t be my favorite meal. Daddy likes it more than I do. I don’t like the texture. It’s kind of rubbery.

John: Pork is rubbery!

Sharon: I’m counting down. I’ve kind of had enough. It was fine. But I’m basically eating the same things every day. I would be more adventurous, but I don’t have time to be more adventurous.

John My food today was similar to my food yesterday, but I’m saving the world and doing greater things for everybody so I feel good.

Mary (a family friend) asked us to go to dinner tomorrow and have birthday cake for their son tomorrow night and I said, “we are so screwed.” I explained to her that I was vegan for the week. I told her that I would come over, but I just wouldn’t eat any cake, and she said, “but we’re getting Baskin Robbins ice cream cake, are you sure you don’t want any?” And I told her I couldn’t eat it.

I think it’s good. I think it’s delicious. It’s got pulled pork sauce, so it’s nice and tangy. I think your mother is turning religious, she says this is like Lent.