Also this week, I've been spending time (read: wasting time efficiently) researching exercise and ways of eating (I hesitate to use the world "diet" here b/c people misinterpret that to mean a short-term, faddish way of losing weight, when what I mean by "diet" is actually a way of eating healthily and for life.) While I haven't been sick at all since moving to Montreal (shocking, I know), I haven't been feeling all that healthy. Yes, these things matter to me (as always, please send your complaints care of The West Coast, Canada.) What this all means is that I'm going to wake up tomorrow and go for a 30 minute bike ride right way. It's called Morning Cardio, people! While I have been doing my usual 3x/week weights sessions at the Y, I haven't been keeping up in the cardio department, though I have been biking across town a lot, which counts for something. However, I feel like my heart needs more. And I need to be a powerful force when the revolution comes. Oh yes.

This is all really interesting to me though, not just on a personal level. The interweb is chock full of stuff about diet and exercise. It's amazing (though not shocking at all). But, yeah, since this is a blog: on a personal level, I'm a fan of low-carb eating myself b/c sugar and white starches totally do me in. I still eat carbs (I am not insane - I too need chocolate), but in moderation, and I eat so much more healthily this way (which I've been doing for about a year and a half). It's amazing that when, say, pasta or rice is not the centre of your meal, but only acts in a condiment-like way, how many vegetables you eat. And protein, of course. As an example, this site has a lot of interesting information on it: www.lowcarb.ca. I sort of stumbled across low-carb eating b/c my skin was having 'issues' and a lot of what I read suggested cutting sugar and white flour out of one's diet (or at least limiting it to once or twice a week as after-dinner dessert only). So I did, and voila, my skin got better. And on top of that I got more energy and lost some weight. At that time I was also riding my bike every day and exercising with weights 2 or three times a week. However, I was still carrying around weight on my waist and stomach. It totally went away when I changed the way I ate! So, well, having gone through that experience myself, I find all this stuff on the web chronicling other people's experiences fascinating. Okay, so I find the whole internet fascinating, but right now, this is drawing my focus. I'm also trying to write an abstract about diet blogs, so all this is done in the name of research. Research! Yaay.