Nov 1 - Another New Back Exercise

  I was chatting to my Granny today via email and asked her permission to reproduce her article 'Just A Few Words' as a guest blog, so that you could all enjoy her thoughts on buttocks, hippopotamus, gillyflower and more.  It was an article written in 1994 with a PS written recently.  It has stuck with me for all these years and I'm sure you'll enjoy it too.
  Granny loves to hear what people think of her writing and is also very keen to know what your favourite words are so if moved to do so, leave a comment, share your favourite word, post on my facebook etc. and I'll pass any feedback I get along to her.
  My Granny has always been a wordsmith, for my entire living memory at any rate, and she has instilled in me a love of words, language, books, grammar and punctuation, reading, writing and vigorous conversation and debate.  She is still a huge influence in my life, particularly when it comes to my writing.  An improperly placed comma or apostrophe on the blog does not go unnoticed by her eagle eye and I get email alerts warning me of any required corrections.  Lucky for me Mr Smart usually beats her to it each night!

  Today was a relatively good day at work, a little more playing with Powerpoint and I got some invoices moving.  My desk still looks and feels like a bomb site but I'm trying not to let it worry me.  I did a lot of errands at lunch too, a small scone cutter at House, shampoo and paper towel from Big W, a new toy for one of the mini-Masterchefs who has had a birthday recently.  The running around did rather cut into my lunch break though, so I opted to buy my lunch from Nando's today.
  After work I popped home to grab my grocery shopping list and drop of the items purchased today then headed off to physio.  The back has been feeling better and again Rush confirmed he felt this was the case too.  We've changed one of the exercises going forward.  The new one is a doozy.
  I sit with feet on the ground then 'activate' my glutes (clench) and rise to a stand without using my arms and then slowly sit down again all without unclenching.  Try it!  It is really hard to keep them clenched on your way down to a sit.  There is a point in a sit where you just trust your butt to gravity and it's surprisingly difficult to override that habit!
  I have to do that one five repetitions, five times a day and continue the back bends too.  The exercises aren't difficult per se but I'm still glad that Rush does me little stick figure reminders.  I'm not back to the physio until Monday week now as Rush wants me to use the exercises to build up the muscle for a few extra days before he checks the progress again.  He put on some tape on as it helps remind me to keep it in the right position but said I can take it off whenever it wears out.  My guess is that it might 'wear out' on Monday.  I've been missing my Buffercising!

Today's food and exercise were:

• Breakfast was yoghurt, berries, a peeled and sliced kiwi fruit
• Morning snack was a whole kiwi fruit with skin on.
• Lunch was a Nando's classic chicken wrap with lemon and herb basting.
• Afternoon snack was a Pink Lady apple, cored and sliced and then later, two pecan nut halves, two hazelnuts, four almonds, two brazil nuts and a half of dried peach.
• Exercise was back bends and glute flexes throughout the day.
• I got home at 8pm after physio and grocery shopping so I included a pre-dinner snack today of five Vita-Weat Multigrain Rice Crackers with Yumi's Hummus.
• Dinner was three stuffed Portobello mushrooms.  The stuffing was a mixture of regular and Panko breadcrumbs, olive oil, 30g bacon pieces, 70g semi-dried tomatoes finely chopped, shredded baby spinach, Lemnos Persian Marinated Fetta and two anchovy fillet finely chopped (but not finely enough as it turned out on one mouthful),
• Dessert was a 170g Dairy Farmers Thick & Creamy 98% Fat Free Vine Passionfruit Yoghurt topped with slivered almonds, pumpkin seeds and a diced half of dried peach.

  
  My blood sugar reading tonight was a horrific 8.3 two hours after eating.  Not sure what did it... the breadcrumbs perhaps, or the sheer quantity of oil holding them together?  Even if they were rice-based, I find it hard to believe that five measly Vita-Weat crackers were responsible.  It was so unexpected I re-checked it again twenty minutes later and by then it was down to 7.2 so not a hundred percent what the go is there.
  That's it for another day folks, might be a lateish blog tomorrow night due to dinner plans, but you know it'll be there eventually.  It's become a compulsion, my daily confessional.
  Jess