PE

I finally went for a run this morning. Between illness and being away, it's been a while. They say it doesn't take long to start losing your fitness and with my body still struggling with asthma, I decided to take it fairly easy. Not only did I take it slower but I also cut my jog short. As I got to the 1 mile gate (we have a gate about 1.6km from the house so I've nicknamed it 1 mile gate) it got me thinking about the 1.6km run we had to run as part of PE at school.

What I was thinking was how easy running 1.6km seems to me now in comparison to when I was forced to do it at school. In some ways I wouldn't mind being able to travel back in time and finally nail that run once and for all. :-) It's okay, I haven't lost my marbles. I'm definitely in the "hate PE" camp and really have no desire to go back there.

BUT what a shame that I didn't know then what I know now about health and fitness. All PE seemed to be from my angle was a bludge for those who were good at sports and a nightmare for the rest of us. Now maybe I just scored BAD PE teachers but the amount of favouritism and assumptions they made (putting people into boxes) was terrible.

I remember my first PE teacher reacting in complete surprise when we had a netball section as part of our PE program. She actually said to me "you're really good at netball for a beginner". I was tempted to slug her. I was new to the school and had just come from 3 years of playing netball both summer and winter as well as inter-school. I even played up a grade at times and my Saturday team only ever lost 1 game while our inter-school team didn't lose any! I'm not saying I was a netball star or anything - but I certainly wasn't a beginner!!!! She just made that assumption based on the fact that I wasn't a natural at all things sporty - and had a fairly obvious dislike for the subject.

Not that it's really fair to blame it all on my teachers'. After all, when you hate something with a passion like I did with PE, you don't exactly put in a great effort. And any excuse to get out of it will do. LOL. And I must have been a frustration to my PE teacher as I spent half the time unable to participate due to an injury in my wrist (which was unfortunately made a lot worse thanks to the PE teachers that ran our school camp-site who insisted I climb a rather tall tree even though one hand was bandaged and I had a note saying I wasn't to use it).

Every 6 months we had to do this fitness test which involved a timed 1.6km run, sit ups and a flexibility test. I could nail the sit-ups no worries. We were only allowed to go as far as 100 and I could do that without causing me any muscle aches the next day. No idea why as I definitely didn't practise. I just could. But the run - well let's just say I came pretty close to the back of the pack most times. And flexibility - well I certainly had none of that. Now, with doing yoga, my flexibility is HEAPS better than it was back when I was in my early teens! I used to struggle to reach my toes with my fingertips and now I can get over a handspan past - doh! It never once occured to me that doing some simple stretches at home might have assisted my flexibility a little.

So, out of curiosity, I wouldn't mind the opportunity to go back to PE now and see if things are any different. If I perform differently (with improved fitness and confidence) and if it may have changed my attitude toward, and general enjoyment of, PE.

I do wonder though, if I had been treated less like a leper by my PE teachers (perhaps that's exaggerating but I'm hoping you'll get what I mean), whether my interest in all things physical might have been sparked a little younger than 30. I feel like all I really learnt from my PE classes was that any physical activity was simply pure torture and humiliation.

How about you? Are you in the "loved PE" or "hated PE" camp? Anyone out there have a PE teacher who was actually nice to those who didn't excel in the subject? Anyone want to share any of their own PE teacher stories? LOL.

I have one more to share with you. I was involved in a youth choir during my early high school years and one day we had a big reunion of past and present members of the choir. Guess who turned up? My PE teacher! Nothing like running into your PE teacher on the weekend. LOL. She was very pleasant and friendly toward me and lo and behold, come next PE lesson, the friendliness continued. What the.....? I will admit it was nice for a change but at the same time I was completely confused. Now that we had some kind of common bond I deserved to be treated better? It just shouldn't work like that. :-( Oh well, we teach our kids that life isn't fair and I guess that's the sad truth of it.

At least I have the satisfaction of knowing I would blitz that fitness test if I did have to take it today. :-)

Favourite Foods

I have discovered a great combination of foods for a dessert that I LOVE and is fairly healthy too. Cut up apple (green apples work best but it's still nice with whatever apples you have), several dollops of natural yoghurt and a drizzle of honey. It's such a great mixture of flavours and textures. I've never really been a big fan of honey but have been using it more in my attempts to reduce the amount of white sugar we consume. I think it's kind of growing on me as a "sweet treat" and because it really is very sweet, you don't need to use very much.

My other favourite food at the moment is celery pieces with cheese. No idea why I'm craving celery but at least it's a real food. It actually seems to be quite a good substitute for my chipaholic cravings.

With Easter having just past, I can't say my attempts to keep white sugar out of my diet are going all that well. :-) Chocolate chip hot cross buns - way too yummy for my waistline!!! LOL. But I figure the most important thing with improving our health through diet is to keep learning and trying new things.

My next experiment will be to find a bean or legume that I like cold to have on my lunch time salad. That will be interesting as I'm a fairly new convert to eating legumes and beans much at all, let alone eating them cold. Coming into winter we'll probably eat more soups for lunch and they're much easier for including beans and legumes. If I get game enough to try them cold, I'll let you know how it goes. :-)

Healthy Apple Slice

I've been experimenting a bit lately with trying to improve the quality of nutrition in our diet. We don't do too badly but like most things there's room for improvement. One area we haven't been doing too great in until recently was the use of refined (white) flours and sugar. So I've been trying to gradually find ways to replace these.

This is a recipe that I came up with recently when I was trying to find a low-fat, low-sugar cake to serve to visitors. It's actually a cake but with a heavier texture than most cakes. You could bake it in a loaf pan but I use a square cake dish and it's not as deep, more like you'd expect a slice to be. You also get smaller pieces that way so you're not consuming "too much". :-)

HEALTHY APPLE SLICE

2 cups wholemeal self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 dessert spoons honey (fairly generous ones)
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup apple sauce
2 fresh apples peeled and chopped

The best part about this recipe is that you basically chuck it all in a bowl and mix. I didn't add the apples until the rest of it was mixed together though. I have a salad server with a hole in the middle of it that I find just right for mixing the ingredients together. I'm sure any spoon would be fine though.

Topping: Once the batter was in the pan I sprinkled the top with oats and cinnamon before baking (did you know that both oats and cinnamon are good for diabetics?).

It takes about 40 minutes in my oven on around 180C but you might have to experiment a bit with your own oven - no 2 ovens seem to be the same. One good thing about it is that if it's undercooked a little it's not so noticable as it's a heavy-ish texture already. You don't want to overcook it though.

Once it's cooled you just cut it up into pieces - all pretty easy really. I love the fact that it doesn't need icing.

Here's the recipe I adapted it from:

FUDGE CAKE
1.5 cups SR flour
3 Tbsp cocoa
1 cup castor sugar
1 cup water
1 tsp imitation vanilla essence
1 Tbsp white vinegar
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Whisk ingredients together and bake 35-40 minutes at 180C. They use a ring tin in the recipe. You could use whatever you have. I'll often double this recipe if I want to make a cake or I've used it for making a kind of brownie (again in my square pan). If I'm making "brownies" with it I just dust the top with icing sugar. Otherwise you can ice it with chocolate icing.

You'll notice this recipe doesn't have egg, milk or butter/margarine in it so it's suitable for people with allergies to these things. Just make sure you don't ice it with butter icing if you're going to give it to someone with dairy allergies. :-) Not having these ingredients also makes it lower in fat (and you can lower it more by substituting half the vegetable oil for apple sauce like I did for my apple slice) and also fairly frugal.

Happy Cooking!

Jodi