frugal and greenish

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1940’s Fitness

I posted this to my regular blog I keep on my employers web site first but thought it was important as part of the 1940’s Experiment to share this on here…. people were on a day to day basis more active during the 1940’s and I think exercise will be key to losing weight and improving my general health….. PS Just got back from another brisk walk during my lunch break- am on a roll….. woo hoo!

Frugal Fitness

In my ongoing quest (have been procrastinating about this for 10 years) to lose weight and get fitter, one of the stumbling blocks (OK excuses) for me, for my lack of exercise, has been the cost of gym membership, swimming pool membership etc etc ad nauseum.. Finally, and I do mean finally, I seem to have got my well padded arse into gear and for the past 10 days I have taken a leaf out of “Forrest Gump’s” achievement bible and simply “started walking”..

Walking is free, walking is frugal, walking is a safe exercise to do if you are as large as I am. But the walking I really like to do is hiking….being outdoors, feeling the cold wind on my face, walking and laughing with my kids, being silly, while all the time moving forward, burning the fat.

I’ve taken advantage of the various trails around Bridgewater. I use the Centennial trail for a short walk during my coffee break at work (it’s literally just outside the door), the kids and I walked the woodland trail around the duck pond last weekend and on saturday we drove to Miller Point Peace Park….. There is so much to see and appreciate while hiking, it is never boring!

In addition to gauge my fitness level improvement, I have been going to HB Studios Sports Centre in Dayspring once a week. The rubber elevated track is wonderful to walk on and the air is climate controlled so walking conditions are perfect. It’s just $2 a session (you can walk for as long as you like). Walking once around the track is 200 metres, 5 times is 1 km and 7 times is 1 mile. 10 days ago, I walked as far as I could and was horrified that all I could manage was 2 laps…. part of the reason is that when I walk a quite severe crushing pain kicks in around my lower spine. This is simply weight related as it always massively improves the more weight I lose….(another incentive to keep on going!). On Sunday Em Hobbit and I popped over to the sports centre to walk the track again. I ended up walking 6 laps in total (4 on one go followed by a short rest and then another 2). This was a huge improvement in just one week and it has supplied me with a much needed dose of motivation.

Above all, what I have liked about the hiking we have done is it gets us out together as a family and we have FUN…and exercise is good for producing endorphins and yes I really do feel quite wonderful for a few hours afterwards!

FUN is free and I like that…

Coming next: A fabulous school initiative that all schools should participate in to not only teach our kids how food grows but to inspire a healthier diet http://www.classroomvictorygarden.org. At the Hobbit House we will be planting our very own!

 

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Not 1940’s but my other passion..

I hate waste… I guess the 1940’s housewife during WWII would have been very mindful of waste. Supplies were scarce, foods were rationed and many manufacturing industries were scaled back. People were encouraged to “Make do and Mend”, use their food scraps up and what they couldn’t use was donated to the community “pig swill” bin or fed to garden livestock.

In todays society we should perhaps take notice of this early form of recycling..

And that is another of my passions… trying to make things last longer, repairing, reusing, not throwing things away because we need something newer and shinier…

And that is precisely what I did with my beautiful bouquet of Valentine’s Roses this year. I couldn’t bare to see them just thrown away so I kept them and watched them as they became crispier and crispier. Work colleagues made comments that it was about time I perhaps threw them away but I waited. And today my roses were dry enough to make “Valentine Rose Petal Pot-Pourri” and now I can treasure the petals for many months more..

CLICK HERE FOR MY HOW-TO WITH PHOTOS!