Definitely getting old...

[denny]

...I'm going to join a gym this evening. It's a sad day when you have to acknowledge that your body is going to fall apart rapidly unless you do some maintenance work.

Virgin Active have opened a place within a few hundred yards of my flat, which is close enough that even I can't claim it's not convenient... and I'm starting to think that I could see quite an appreciable improvement in my leg if I did some regular exercise with it. On NYE at TG I noticed that my ability to dance is still slowly coming back, and as dancing is the only exercise it gets at present, I can only presume that a bit more exercise might well help it recover more quickly. It'd be really nice to be able to dance all night again...

Anyway, membership is going to cost me 65 quid a month, so I guess I'd better take it seriously. Anyone want to offer any advice? I'm already aware that I'm going to have to eat more, but help yourselves to any more detailed digs at my diet, I know you want to :) I'm sure there must be other things I haven't even thought of as well.

Oh, and obviously I'll be going over things quite carefully with both the personal trainer they assign me, and the physiotherapist I've been seeing, to try to make sure that I don't do myself an injury with this.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Raw food - fruit, salads. That's got to be your first thing. And take unsalted nuts, dried fruit etc to work to snack on instead of chocolate and crisps.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Fruit is nice, and I suppose if I was eating it every day it might stop going off before I get around to eating it, which is what usually seems to happen when I pick some up while shopping. Also, work have occasionally started getting fruit in for us all to snack on... one of my bosses is almost as worried about my diet as you are :)

Salad is boooooooooooooooring... I blame this mostly on lettuce, which is highly tedious. Cucumber is quite nice, but a bit dull. I don't really like tomatoes, but I can eat about half of one before I start pulling faces. After that I get lost... what else do you put in salads?

I'm sort-of allergic to nuts, so I'll pass on that one. Dried fruit is unpleasant to eat... a texture thing, I think. I have lots of weird texture things about food.

Remember I told you that I consider myself a fussy eater, and you said you couldn't see it personally? ... :)

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Some lettuce is nicer than others - iceberg is pretty dull, but romaine has more flavour to it. Green salads are more interesting if you add things like avocado, asparagus, cheese (feta or fried haloumi are good), sliced sausages, olives, bacon, chicken, sundried tomatoes, antipasta generally(found in jars, in the same bit of the supermarket as the olives) etc.

Grated carrots with sultanas and a squeeze of orange juice is nice, or just batons of carrots (which you can get ready cut if you can't be bothered, and dips.

Rice salad is slightly more effort, but brown rice with cucumber, tuna, olives, and a lemony dressing is nice.

You could try doing pasta with things other than tuna from time to time. Use a jar of ready made sauce and add a few extra vegetables.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

The last one is my best hope, I think... I've got no objection to cooking various other things with pasta, if they're claimed to contain some useful nutrient that I need. Depending on what they taste like, of course.

Brown rice is as nasty tasting as brown bread... needs more refining to make it edible ;)

Throwing lumps of meat in salads would never have occurred to me, that could make them more palatable :)

I'm not generally keen on 'interesting' cheeses... I only really eat cheddar and similar things. I know I don't like feta cheese, never heard of the other one. Fried cheese? Oddness.

Avacado is okay, asparagus is quite bitter iirc? Carrots are good, I'd forgotten about them.

Olives are foul :)

[hilarita.livejournal.com]

You can always pour lots of dressing over there. I usually make my own balsamic vinegar and olive oil mix (this takes about a minute). Mayonnaise is unfortunately full of fat, but does make lettuce about 1000% more interesting.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

OK, there are still plenty of salady things you can do. I don't like lettuce-based salads on their own either.

Try couscous with lots of chopped herbs, greens (baby leaf spinach is good) and cucumber with some lemon juice and pepper.

Of course, you might not fancy salads much in the winter, but you can try finely slicing vegetables and cooking them for a few minutes in vegetable stock or miso soup. It's lovely, and if you cook some noodles at the same time, it can be nicely filling.

[fiona-kitty.livejournal.com]

Rocket, watercress and spinach salad is not boring! :)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

You're a Very Strange Kitten.