Fun With Kale: Juice Extractor Edition

“Hey, do you want to make kale juice?”

The question came from my mom, who had apparently stumbled upon a juicing recipe that sounded appetizing to her.

As the idea hung in the air for a few seconds, I envisioned myself slurping straight kale juice from a straw in all its vegetably glory. Blech. Don’t get me wrong: I love kale, but I love it as something I have to chew and not as something in liquid form. Still, before I even looked at the recipe, I decided I’d try it. When it comes to food (especially healthy recipes), I’ll try almost anything once.

It turned out that the recipe for kale juice did not look nearly as intimidatingly kale-ish as I’d imagined. The concoction, which came from Giada De Laurentiis and can be found in a recent issue of Food Network Magazine, called for 1.5 pounds of kale, two medium apples (like Fuji or Honeycrisp, halved and cored), two medium carrots (scrubbed), and one small lemon (peeled). Not bad.

Some quick nutritional info:
-Kale is known as a superfood: It’s high in fiber (digestion assistance), iron (oxygen transportation, liver function, etc.), copper (heart rhythm, red blood cell formation, utilization of iron, etc.), calcium (bone strength, etc.), antioxidants (cancer prevention), Vitamin A (cancer prevention and improvement of vision and skin quality), Vitamin C (an immune system strengthener), and Vitamin K (cancer prevention, blood clot prevention, bone health).
-Regular apple consumption can help with bone strength, lower the risk of asthma, lower LDL (bad) cholesterol, and help to prevent diseases like Alzheimer’s and many types of cancer.
-Carrot consumption has been shown to improve vision and skin quality and to prevent heart disease, cancer, and tooth damage.
-Lemons are high in Vitamin C, as well as in potassium and calcium (which keep hearts and bones healthy).

I could, of course, go on and on singing the nutrition-related praises of these four ingredients, but you get the idea.

So I whipped out my handy-dandy juice extractor, and Mom and I got to work making half of the recipe.

Ready to go!

Prepping the kale

Slicing the apple (I used Opal because there was one on hand and because I think Opals have a nice balance of tartness and sweetness.)

Peeling the lemon

We only had baby carrots, so we estimated how many baby carrots would be equal to a medium-sized carrot.

A selection of the ingredients we used

One little word of advice: When you’re prepping the fruits and veggies for the juicer, make sure the pieces are small enough to fit into the chute. It’s not a huge deal if they’re too big because you can always cut them down more while you’re juicing, but it’s just easier if you don’t have to stop in the middle of the juicing process.

When our ingredients were ready, we fed them into the juicer and watched the magic happen before our very eyes.

That’s my “I’m concentrating on feeding apples and kale into the chute” face.

Ciao, kale!

Check out the colors!

Mom adding some ingredients to the juicer

Beautiful kale color!

Don’t you want to guzzle that down?

Adding the last of the goods

After the juice extractor was done doing its thing, it was time for Mom and me to try it out. Even though I wasn’t sure if I’d like the juice, I wasn’t too nervous anymore; I mean, it’s difficult for me to feel scared to try something that I know is ridiculously good for me.

That is pure health.

What’s up, kale juice?

This was absolutely nothing like the vegetably horror I feared when I first heard the term “kale juice.” It was tasty, for sure! Plus, it had a nice sweetness to it, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet. Good stuff! (Side note: I saved the pulp from the juicer, and I’m planning to use it to make something tasty like bread. Stay tuned!)

Verdict: I’d definitely make that again. Next time, though, I’ll make the full recipe! Thank you, Giada!

Cheers!

Getting Acquainted With Planks

Two quick bits of trivia about me:
-I am competitive.
-I really like doing planks.

Naturally, I could not resist the temptation to try the 30-day plank challenge. Planks strengthen the body’s core, back, and even shoulder and hip areas. A stronger core means improved balance and stability, among other benefits. Who can say no to a strengthened core? Not I, my friends. Not I.

I think this particular challenge has been circulating around social media sites for a while, but I only really noticed it when a co-worker e-mailed it to me in mid-December. As much as I wanted to start the challenge right away, I knew I’d lose track of what day I was on if I began in the middle of the month. So I forced myself to wait until January, and I started the challenge on the first day of 2014.

Over the course of 30 days, people who do the challenge (I’ll call them challengers) work their way incrementally from a 20-second plank to a five-minute plank. Here are the details:

I don’t know where this challenge originated, but if it’s yours, let me know and I’ll give you credit!

The thing is, though, that I was already able to do planks for one to two minutes fairly comfortably, so I decided to increase the level of difficulty for myself. Instead of going from 20 seconds to five minutes, I’d start at 1:20 and go to six minutes. Fun fun.

The first week or so of the challenge was wonderful. I was at my comfort level plank-wise, (lengths ranged from 1:20 to 1:45) and I hadn’t really needed to push myself. Once I was consistently planking for more than two minutes, however, I started having more moments of struggle. The funny thing about planks is that they’re a lot like running: One day you feel great, but the next day, for no apparent reason, you struggle. My plank challenge called for me to do two minutes of planks for three days in a row. The first day, it seemed like an eternity, and I suffered for half of the time! The second day, I dreaded planking because the day before had been so rough, but I was fine and felt like I could keep going once I hit the two-minute mark (I didn’t keep going, though). The third day was a real planking struggle.

From two minutes, I worked my way to 2:30. Yesterday (Day 16 of the challenge), I bumped up to three minutes, which matched the longest plank I’d ever done in my life (which I’d logged on Dec. 13, 2013).

I’m not going to describe to you in words how it felt. I’ll let a series of pictures do the trick.

With one minute complete, I was feeling pretty good!

Although I was still holding my own as I approached two minutes, my smile was gone. My abs were grumpy, and I knew I wasn’t quite yet two-thirds of the way done with the day’s challenge.

No, that’s not an intentional thumbs-up. That’s apparently my natural planking form when I’m concentrating due to severe pain caused by planking for more than two minutes.

If this ever ends up in a museum somewhere as a piece of art, I’ll call it “The Grimace at the 2:34 Mark.”

Do you want to know why this is the most blurry picture? It’s because I was ALMOST at three minutes, and I was shaking a little bit. Oh, and suffering. There was that.

I did it! Three minutes! Yes, that is a picture of Michael Jordan behind me.

I did another three-minute session of planks today (Day 17 of the challenge). While I’m over halfway through the 30 days, I’m at exactly the halfway point of my plank length, since my goal is to get to six minutes. At this point, it seems like a tall order to make it to six minutes, but I know that if I keep at it, I’ll succeed. And hey, I bump up to 3:30 tomorrow. Just to be honest, I don’t always look forward to my next session of planks (sometimes I do, but not always), but I do always looking forward to the end result.

Pressing on!

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

You know what I love about exercise goals?

They keep me from making excuses and getting lazy. If I have a choice between lounging comfortably on the sofa and logging some minutes on the exercise bike so I can meet a goal, I will usually pry myself off the sofa and hop on the bike. Hey, I’m a competitive person. Setting goals for myself and then trying to meet or exceed them is me competing against myself. And I love it.

At the beginning of 2013, I had written out some exercise goals for myself for the year in the categories of running, crunches, exercise bike, planks, and walking/hiking. Halfway through the year, I checked in to let you all know how I was doing; I was great in some areas, OK in other categories, and dismal in a few.

I’m sure you’ve been sitting on the edge of your seat since the summer to find out how I ended up doing. Well, fear not: The time has come for me to unveil my 2013 Grand Exercise Totals!

My official (slightly weathered) sheet of 2013 exercise goals

Goal #1: Run 500 miles.
-Halfway Point (June 30): 290.38 miles, well over my target of 250 miles
-How I Proceeded: I was pleased with that, but I knew I was over my halfway target because of training for the Pittsburgh Half Marathon in May. So then I signed up for the Hershey Half Marathon in October, and I was 99.9% sure I would reach my goal.
-Date Met: October 8, during a 4-mile run.
-2013 Total: 563.1 miles. Woohoo! My previous PR for miles in a year was 420. After the Hershey Half, I slacked off a bit with my running, mainly to let myself rest up.

Yep, 12 of my 563.1 miles in 2013 came on this training run for the Pittsburgh Half Marathon (with Mom and Candace).

Adding 13.1 more miles to my 2013 total during the Pittsburgh Half Marathon and loving every minute!

Goal #2: Walk/hike 250 miles.
-Confession: As I mentioned at the halfway point, my original goal for this was 150 miles, but I’d already exceeded that goal by the end of June, so I increased the number.
-Halfway Point: 158 miles. That number was aided by a winter mountaineering trip to New Hampshire and a few training hikes leading up to it.
-How I Proceeded: I actually love walking; it was one of my main cardio components when I first started getting in shape. So for the last half of 2013, I aimed to walk a mile at work each day, and Mom and I also found excuses to walk into town to shop or grab lunch.
–Date Met: October 26, during a 3-mile walk to get homemade sticky buns, ironically.
–2013 Total: 284.1 miles. This number combined with my running total equals nearly 850 miles my legs traveled in 2013! I’m pretty pumped about that.

Tackling a 12-mile training hike with my pals Katlyn and Matt K.

Yeah, that’s THE Mount Washington…in the middle of winter!

Goal #3: Do 50,000 crunches.
-Confession: At the beginning of 2013, I assumed I’d have no trouble with this one because it averages out to 1,000 crunches per week (with a few weeks off), which is very manageable to me. However, when I reached the halfway point…
-Halfway Point: 18,800. I hadn’t reached the end-of-June target of 25,000, which was really surprising to me! Still, I knew all I had to do was step things up a notch to regain the ground.
-How I Proceeded: I set aside two days each week to do 1,000 crunches each day until I caught up. It honestly felt great to have goals to chase (that’s the competitor in me talking).
-Date Met: December 7, thanks to that day’s session of L.A.W.!
-2013 Total: 51,000. Yeah, I slacked off a bit after I reached my goal, but after logging 32,200 crunches since the end of June, I wanted to give my abs a break from crunches and allow them to focus on something else, like Goal #4.

Here’s my exercise log for August 24, when I somehow added 2,000 crunches (in one day) to my 2013 total.

Goal #4: Do 180 minutes of planks.
-Confession: Yes, I know the goal I listed in my post at the halfway point was 120 minutes. My very first goal had been (and I quote) “180 minutes (120 minutes),” meaning that Plan A was to make it to 180 minutes, but if that looked out of reach, I’d aim for Plan B, which was 120 minutes. My numbers by June 30 were nowhere near 180 minutes, so I kind of ignored Plan A and targeted Plan B.
-Halfway Point: 48 minutes. Yowch! I wasn’t even on pace for my Plan B goal, so I knew I had to step it up a bit (OK, a lot).
-How I Proceeded: I figured out that if I did just three minutes of planks each week, I could at least reach my Plan B goal. But then I caught the plank bug (a good thing) and just went crazy with planking. Before I knew it, I had reached 120 minutes, and my previously-forgotten-about Plan A goal (180 minutes) was in sight. The rest is history.
-Date Met: December 9. And I was so pumped up that I KEPT GOING!
-2013 Total: 200 minutes. That’s right: I did 152 minutes of planks during the last half of the year. Not bad, self!

Ain’t nothin’ like some planks…

…especially when there’s a cat pretending to do planks next to you!

Goal #5: Log 25 hours on the exercise bike.
-Confession/Side Note: OK, 25 hours in a year works out to an average of less than a half-hour per week. Still, I was apparently so focused on climbing mountains and running that I didn’t spend much time (understatement) on the bike during the first half of the year. So I found myself aiming for my Plan B goal of 15 hours.
-Halfway Point: 6 hours and 5 minutes. Whaaaaat? Not good! I remember thinking that I should just aim for Plan B, which I was sure I could achieve, but also hope to reach 20 hours, which seemed like more of a stretch.
-How I Proceeded: When I started training for the Hershey Half Marathon, I logged some minutes on the exercise bike each week as part of my cross-training. Then, as I gave my legs a break from running after the half-marathon, I kept my cardio endurance up by getting much better acquainted with the bike. Also, I found ways to make it fun: reading, listening to music, brainstorming, even doing intervals. I hit the 15-hour mark on October 26, and I kept plugging away. As the end of November approached, I passed the 20-hour mark; the once-seemingly-impossible 25-hour notch was within reach as December began to wane. Did I make it? Read on!
-Date Met: December 30 (25 hours). Yes, that’s cutting it a little close to the end of the year, but I did it!
-2013 Total: 25 hours and 5 minutes. OK, so I barely made it. But I made it! And I didn’t quit! That, my friends, is what these goals are about.

Speeding right along (well, sort of).

No excuses!

I’m definitely pumped about how 2013 went as far as exercise is concerned. Now I’m setting my sights on 2014!
-run 600 miles
-do 60,000 crunches
-log 30 hours on the exercise bike
-do 240 minutes of planks
-walk/hike 300 miles

Let’s do this.