So, thanks to one of my teams I've been doing some extra crunches lately, 100 four days this week extra, and my newest workout plan has been more ab heavy than previously, and my increase in yoga is always good for core, and wow, I'm starting to feel my abs! Always a nice feeling, more or less. Now, just gotta keep shedding the blubber around these crazy muscles!

Today was a pretty good fast day for most of the day. I was on the "fasting high" that people who do this talk about from when I woke up until about 2:30pm. Unfortunately, after that I came down a bit hard and fast, but managed to grab my snack and bring things back around to normal. I also had an excellent and productive workday.

My midday workout was more interesting than usual. Mayhem has challenged me to 1000 reps of five exercises over the next week. I've chosen exercises I can do at work: wide leg squat, close-grip wall push-ups, seated knee-lifts, split squats (standing lunge), and an overhead lift holding a book. I did 20 of each early in my day and again in the late afternoon. In the middle though, I took my new reward: my Prokofiev piano book, to the practice rooms and played a bit, then did two exercises, and played more, and more exercise until I had done 40 reps of each. Today my total for these is 80/1000. Still a long way to go! I may not reach 1000, but I can try.

Oh, it was Fun Fact Friday today! Your fact is:
Eat More Yogurt!

Okay, we already knew that, but I just saw a study that looked at not just yogurt, but yogurt containing the specific culture of Lactobacillus plantarus, a plant-derived bacterium.

In this study, subject either had yogurt containing one of two strains of L. plantarus or yogurt with other cultures. The L. plantarus groups showed significant improvements in constipation relief and the liver enzymes AST, ALT, and gamma-GTP!

I need to check out yogurts and Kefir's out here and see if I can find this bug to inoculate into my next yogurt batch.

Citation for the article:
Improvement of constipation and liver function by plant-derived lactic acid bacteria: A double-blind, randomized trial
Fumiko Higashikawa, Masafumi Noda, Tomokazu Awaya, Kazuhiro Nomura, Hirotaka Oku, Masanori Sugiyama
Nutrition 26(4):367-374, 2010

So, now I am done working out, done snacking, and pretty much chilling for the evening. Isn't that nice! Maybe I'll write for a bit, or read, or something. We'll see.

Tomorrow is Saturday, hooray! Sleeping in and then running in normal temperatures later in the morning sounds great to me. Me and hubby need to be really good this weekend because we'll be getting off track in less than a week at PAXEast in Boston!! I don't plan to get too off track, but you know, it's tough.

Okay. My weekend plans mostly involve relaxing, exercising, and eating. I like that. Anyone doing anything fun this weekend?

Onward and upward!