fromvikingstock's posterous

This is my second blog.

If you visited my first blog at http://longboatfvs.blogspot.com
you know it was experimental, rather adolescent at times, pretty negative in parts frequently off topic and sometimes too personal for a public forum. That was my first attempt at blogging, and hopefully much of the growing up stuff is behind me now. In this blog, I am shooting for content that is more useful to readers and less cathartic for me.

Since I am still pursuing my three main passions of food, music and the outdoors, I will be writing posts, shooting photos and making videos of my daily activities in Ann Arbor documenting those three passions. Specific topics may include tennis, cycling, river sports, gardening, hiking, weightlifting, yoga and dance.

I'm still a newcomer to Ann Arbor, although I did live here briefly in an earlier life, so my blog will be focused a good deal on the experience of getting to know people in a new place. I'll try not to bore you with excessively subjective drivel that an editor would reject if this blog had any literary standards. In that way I hope to rise above my earlier efforts and internalize some editorial traits for my own benefit. Posts will be infrequent on purpose to allow something worth saying to incubate. I'll tweet when there is something new to see here.

Thanks for visiting. Please come back.

Paul

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Sleep -- The Quintessential Bodybuilder

I considered it a good sign when I awoke to find my cup of Sleepy Time tea on the night stand, full and untouched. It proves I didn't need it, right? I fell asleep before I could drink it. OK, but I hate to waste a good herbal remedy. So when this happened again, I decided to change the game.  

I made a tasty shake with the tea -- something I would be sure to drink before I fell asleep. My problem with night-time tea is it doesn't taste that great. Especially valerian root, the most effective sleep tea. It's horrible tasting but it works if you drink it. So I poured it in the blender, added fresh blueberries and honey and threw in some tofu and a few cashews to make it Zone proper (an homage to Barry Sears -- I still follow his teachings to balance hormone and insulin levels.)

Well, this morning I woke up after trying the shake for the first time and I can tell you for sure, it works. I had an especially strenuous workout yesterday and I feel very well rested today. I slept for 10 hours, got up, fixed a good breakfast of chick pea waffles and wrote this blog post -- something I haven't done in months. 

I'm at that tricky stage in my exercise routine where I've lost a lot of weight and I'm transitioning from cardio to resistance training. It's new territory and that means trial and error. Which means mistakes will happen and that makes it easier go astray or even give up at a crucial stage. I've done it several times before. Does this sound familiar? You get to your goal weight and there is nothing more to do so you celebrate with a pizza and some chocolate cake. Something snaps and you're on your way back to binge eating. It only takes one or two slips to start the downward spiral and if you don't have a good support system, you're almost sure to backslide. The pounds return, you fall into bad habits, start watching TV and skipping workouts, and there goes all your hard work. 

When you transition to lifting, the strong endorphin rush from cardio workouts that kept you going during the weight loss phase isn't there to motivate you any longer. You need another source of motivation. Resistance training is frustrating since you don't see gains right away. Your weight begins to creep up, which could be a sign that you're building muscle, but your whole reward system is based on seeing it go down, so that is disorienting. If you don't have a workout partner and a well planned routine for each day, you can get lost in the novelty of all the machines and equipment. You do three sets of workarounds and then take a shower. What happens? You get clean, but you don't get strong. Eventually you get discouraged. 

What does this have to do with sleep? I have found that sleep is the thing that falls through the cracks when I transition from weight loss to muscle building. In my enthusiasm to maintain the momentum I acquired by achieving the weight loss, I give the lifting everything I have. I want to see some results because I know I live on feedback. Soon I'm over-training which shows up as sleeplessness irritability and a net loss of strength. What could be more disappointing?  

When this let-down is accompanied by another disappointing life experience like job loss or relationship trouble, depression can set in before you recognize it. If you can't see the problem, you can't solve the problem. I've gone through this self defeating response to success several times. It always happens when I'm in the best shape of my life. It may be the cockiness that comes with new levels of achievement. It may be the dizzying array of new possibilities that present themselves when you begin to look and feel successful. Or it may be something more basic and physiological, like sleep. There is something that happens when you lose weight and then move on with your life. Looking back at my own pattern of reaction to weight loss success, I now see that what I need to do during the transition to lifting is lift less and sleep more. 

You don't build muscle in the gym; you build muscle in your sleep. Who knew?  The muscle tissue that you delicately shred with heavy lifting repairs itself best during deep restful rem sleep. This kind of sleep is getting more and more elusive for most people, but you can get if you follow some general guidelines. The ones I follow are at the bottom of this post with the recipe for a tasty sleep shake. 

It's too early to tell if the focus on rest is going to work for me this time. I just made my goal weight a few weeks ago and I'm holding steady at 172 pounds as I lift more weight each week.  But I am sleeping better now and I'm aware of the pitfalls that sabotaged my progress in the past when I made it to the mountaintop of weight loss. The first time I was in good shape I maxed out at a bench press of 185 pounds and then lost my job and had to watch TV and eat all day for a few years to recover. The next time I was in good shape, I got a tiny part as an extra in a movie and made friends online with a tight group of misfits who worship a sex nerd in LA. I liked it so much I packed up and moved to California. It turns out that life isn't like the movies and websites. It took me about two years to recover from that catastrophe and there have been some big ripples between the two tsunamis. 

I'm retired now and have no job to lose, so that won't happen. I have no relationship to screw up, so that isn't a problem. My worst threat now seems to be something just taking shape on the periphery of my awareness, like the returning ghost of an old girlfriend or some new dangerous hobby, maybe the folly of another dream come true or the blindness I just warned you about. Whether you're losing weight or building muscle, sooner or later you will set a goal and achieve it. When that time comes, my advice would be to keep showing up at the gym, remember to set a new goal, and give some thought to the quality of your sleep. 

Sleep Guidelines:

  • Finish your workout before noon.
  • Consume your caffeine before 3 pm. 
  • If you're tired, don't nap -- just do nothing in a scenic place.  
  • Go to bed at the same time every night. 
  • Use your bedroom only for sleep and sex.  
  • Have a small snack at bed time, like a sleep shake.

Bed Time Sleep Shake

  • 1 cup of valerian tea
  •  (Nighty Night, Sleepy Time, Well Rested, any brand will do) 
  • 4 0z of firm tofu
  • 1/2 cup blueberries
  • 4 cashews
  • 1 teaspoon of honey
  • Blend & drink before bed. 

 

 

 

 

A Summer Sublet in a College Town

The population demographics in the town where I live are about to change dramatically. Next week graduating seniors at the University of Michigan will be addressed by President Obama, marking the end of their formal education and sending them out into the world. The week after that, Ann Arbor loses a large percentage of its population. 

There will be yard sales and garage sales and piles of “FREE STUFF” all over town. You will be able to buy everything from living room furniture to baseball cards and anything else you can imagine for almost nothing. Much of the stuff will be stacked up at the curb free for the taking. Futons, microwave ovens, lamps, office chairs, piles of clothing and household furnishings will be adorned with makeshift marketing signs.  

If you had a big truck and a place to put it all, you could fill a warehouse with student what-nots and spend only the loose change in your pocket. I’ve often thought of doing just that and selling it all in September, but everyone has had that idea which is probably why no one ever does it. 

Here, like everywhere, apartment leases run for 12 months but the school year is only 8 months long. For many students, this town has no fascination when their studies are over, so they take off for new careers, summer jobs, or just go home to their parents where the laundry is free and old friends can be looked up and hung around with until fall comes and it all starts over again. 

The housing units that go vacant between May and September create a lucrative rental market for anyone who wants to spend time in a college town when school is out. It isn’t as dumb as it sounds. There are things to do. You can take classes at the University during summer session and Ann Arbor has enough restaurants, art galleries, movies, bars, sporting venues, museums, parks and festivals to fill a summer even if you never set foot inside a classroom. 

With those thoughts in mind, and being naturally attracted by the cheap rent, I set out to find my first summer sublet a decade ago. I was a new start-up self-employed “consultant” back then, in search of clients and a place to sleep.  After a little looking around, I found an ad in the Ann Arbor News. (It was a daily newspaper then -- it’s a web site now:  www.AnnArbor.com but that’s whole different blog post.)  

The sublet was in a big house at the corner of Fifth and Kingsley in Kerrytown, a funky neighborhood in Ann Arbor across the street from the Farmer’s Market and within sight of the famous Zingerman’s delicatessen.  It was perfect for me because I had a rented office above the People’s Food Co-op a block away at Fourth and Catherine. The rent was $200 a month. Normally it would have been $500. 

I met the girl who was moving out and she had all the papers ready to sign. At her suggestion we met at the office of Student Housing on campus. They had forms and guidelines for lessees and sub-lessees like us. She had researched the process and it was all well organized and seamless. I was impressed. I paid the whole thing in advance. $800 for May, June, July and August. She gave me the front door key and a key to the upstairs apartment. 

There were two other room-mates. Francis was gone for the summer and I never did meet her. Melissa was supposed to be moving out in a week, but she stayed for a month until she found another place. That’s the way it goes in Ann Arbor. There were other people living in the downstairs apartment but they may as well have lived in another country. I never saw or had any interaction with them. 

There was a bird to feed and some plants to water and a whole attic with a loft apartment that was vacant and some people came in from New York halfway through the summer to get some furniture they left there, and I was allowed to use all of the dishes and pots and pans and food that Francis left in the refrigerator. It was sort of like a house-sit with benefits. I loved it. The tenant who I was replacing left a nice desk there and I used it for a few months and wanted to buy it, but someone else made her an offer before I got the chance.  

If you own a car, the key to living in downtown Ann Arbor is to get out of town early and stay away all day. It’s best to come back after 6 pm, when the meter maids stop writing tickets. If you don’t do that, you have a problem. I found it easy to follow that pattern during the week because I had a client who was keeping me busy at his office during week days. Sunday is no problem because all the parking is free. On week-ends I had to get creative. I like to sleep in on Saturdays -- that can cost you a lot of money if you find a ticket on your car when you roll out of bed, and depending on how late you roll out, you may find more than one ticket. 

You can’t do this any more, but I discovered a secret back then that saved me a few dollars in parking fees. I found that I could leave my car in the parking structure near the courthouse all day Saturday and overnight, then move it Sunday morning when the gates were up for free parking. No one is in the booth on Sundays and parking is free all over town. I was ticket-free as long as I got out of town by 8:00 am Monday. 

I had a great summer reading books and going for walks, shopping garage sales, going to Art Fair, hanging out in coffee houses, working out at the Central Campus Recreation Building (great old gym) where Michael Phelps trained for the Olympics, and providing my consulting services to my client whenever there was work to do. I got a bicycle and explored a lot of the buildings around campus, found where the practice pianos are in the music building on North campus and spent a lot of time down there playing the same three or four songs over and over to amuse myself. Now I own a piano and I never play it. The summer went by quickly and before I knew it I had decisions to make. 

Francis, the absentee room mate, made me an offer to stay on in the apartment with her -- sight unseen, if I would take the smaller of the two rooms. It was tempting. Francis was developing sort of  a mystique through my habit of browsing her books and making coffee in her French press and using her dishes and living in her space. By then, however, I was getting used to the big room with a view of Kerrytown and I heard she had a boyfriend in New York. I passed on the offer, but have since wondered what would have come of that arrangement. I guess it’s a common thing now but at that time I had never lived with a woman I didn’t know. Francis was totally on board with the idea, but there was that boyfriend in New York. So I can only wonder.  

To sum up, you can do what I did right now. All you need is the flexibility to move into a place and then move out again four months later.  The opportunity comes around every year and the window is now open. To get you started, here is a link to the classified section of The Michigan Daily: 
http://bit.ly/acBUPN . Happy hunting.