Hey, what do you think about a food mini challenge this weekend? Earn 1 point for trying a new vegetable or fruit on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Up to 3 points total.

Nancy , have you ever tried Durian? Maybe put that (and a pair of nose clips) on your list!

Yeah, this is definitely going to be a "challenge"---Dee, will you be able to get your hands on a few things? At least this time of year we have lots of choice. Even if you just buy one little new kind of pepper to chop up and put in your eggs... that would be easy and cheap.

I say let's go for it. If it were easy, it wouldn't be worth doing!
I think the next mini food challenge will be to try preparing a fruit or veggie in a new way. Like grilling peaches (never done that to a peach, but it's supposed to be good... part of me feels like it would be sacrilege). We can also try a good dairy/lean proteins challenge. I need something to get me to try plain greek yoghurt again or kefir, both of which are so good for my body but I just can't get past the sour taste.

I just did a quick search of my local supermarket, and I can get a cactus pear for 99 cents, 1/2 pound of jicama root for under $1.00, an "assorted hot pepper" for 15 cents, and a bunch of dandelion greens (which are supposed to be really good for you) for $2.00, so even if I can't get to a fancy store, I have options.

Last weekend, having to get those three new exercises in, kept me thinking about my goals and kept me moving and motivated. I like that--it's so easy to slack off during the weekend. This weekend, I'll put that cactus pear on the counter and let it stare at me for a couple of days as a constant reminder. Maybe I can get Jim to try something new, too. He's a picky eater, but in the spirit of competition, he might give it a whirl.

K.

Now I may have to venture into a fancy store just for the fun of it!

Zac , what were you doing in Brazil--what brought you there?

Oh, and the blonde munchkin in my new photo is my "best friend" and water balloon nemesis Skippy McGrape (Connor). There's a picture of him with Jim (the hubs) on the lake too in my photos.

I actually was serving as a missionary in Brazil. I was there for two years.

What a great experience that must have been!

Well a double woohoo to me tonight. I did a LONG swim (to the sailboat in the first cove... I know that doesn't mean anything to you, but I was only going to swim to the Napolitano's house, and the sailboat is another third of that distance). Translated, that means I swam the crawl for over an hour (I think it was 75 minutes) at a good, brisk pace. The weather is supposed to warm up here tomorrow, so I'm hoping by Friday to pass the sailboat and swim to the yellow house, then by Sunday to hit the first point. If I can do the point for a week, that's a good 100 minutes of swimming. I'd still like to do the length of the lake by Labor Day, which is probably a 4 hour swim, but I need to find a better way to stay hydrated than tucking a water bottle into my bathing suit between my boobs, LOL!!!

Very exciting. If I were as computer savvy as Rat and Heather, you KNOW I'd have a map on here!
K.

Good point, Pat. I'm terrible at staying hydrated when I lake swim. At the pool, I always keep a bottle on the edge of the pool and stop to drink. I can do about 90 minutes of lake swimming without drinking anything. Longer than that and I start to get really bad foot cramps, then eventually I'll get charlie horses, which SUCK if you're half an hour down the lake from home. I don't know if that's necessarily from dehydration or from the potassium loss. The nice thing here is that it's a small lake and I know a lot of the folks who live here since I've been on the association board of trustees for 14 years, so if I get into serious trouble, I can always flag someone down. A couple of years ago I was on a 3 hour swim and I got horrible calf cramps and wound up dragging myself onto someone's floating trampoline for a half hour rest. The home owner sent her kid swimming out to me with a banana and a bottle of gatorade!

I looked up camelbaks for swimmers and found that some triathletes do swim in them for training, although I can't imagine how uncomfortable that would be. Most of the lake and ocean swimmers in online forums either rely on a spotter to carry their water (and yes, when I do my full lake swim, Jim will spot me) or they tuck water bottles into their shorts. On some of my longer swims, I've done exactly that--rolled plastic water bottles down the back of my suit so I have three sitting in the small of my back. As I empty them, I just put them back in. As long as I'm wearing a fairly high-backed, tight suit, I'm good. I'll definitely look up Nuun--I didn't know you could just buy the electrolytes! Cool.

I'm just thinking how crazy it is to be in this group with all these other morbidly obese or honorarily obese athletes. Like Zac, I've always been big and athletic. Seriously, I just swam the crawl for 75 minutes and I weigh 479 pounds. Who does that? I used to climb mountains every weekend in my 300's (my sister taught step aerobics 3X weekly weighing 280 pounds, and she was the gym's most popular instructor). I remember one weekend climbing Double Top, a mountain right next to Mt. Katahdin, Maine's highest. (not very high compared to the Alaska Range!) I dragged my butt over a really rough trail, skinned both knees, arrived at the top dripping in sweat and covered in dirt (parts of the trail had collapsed, and I had to pull myself up by protruding tree roots and literally crawl up rock faces--I LOVED it!). This young, fit couple showed up while I was eating my sandwich and enjoying the view, and the wife looked at me and said, "Oh--did you CLIMB up here?" I said, "Oh, no. I was airlifted by helicopter." She said, "Really? I didn't know you could arrange that here." Oh my god... had she never seen a fat person who could climb a mountain before? Hey, at least they took my picture for me.

Okay, I think that's my last ramble for the day. I really need to focus the next two days on getting some stuff done so won't be jumping in here every five minutes! Good luck to everyone for the last day of the mid-week challenge. Friday weigh-in should be very interesting!!!

Karen