Helene

On sunday I went with a couple of friends to Korketrekkeren which is a sledging hill in Oslo. I had never tried it out before, so naturally I was excited. It was a sunny day and perfect for some childlike fun. To get there we took the metro to Frognerseteren, except that the metro didn’t go that far. There were some upgrading being done. so buses where set in between Besserud and Frognerseteren.

When we got up there me and Anders rented sledges from Akeforeningen. Those sledges were awesome. They were robustly built for speed. They were heavy (iron all the way, baby). The steering mechanism was the rope you can see Anders is holding in the picture below. By pulling on one end, you get the sledge to steer that way, and no breaks: that’s what your body is for – one way or the other your body will stop moving.

Those sledges screamed speed, and they delivered. Boy, did they deliver! It takes about 6 minutes to get down the hill. The hill ends at a metro station, so it was just to wait for the metro (that arrived after 8 minutes usually), and do it all over again.

The weak link in this threesome was Einar. He brought his own sledge where the seat was duck taped!! We had the batmobil of sledges – Einar had the slowmobile. We rushed ahead, stopped sometimes, and sat waiting for some minutes for Einar to arrive. He refused to trade in the slowmobile for the Ferrari of sledges, no matter what we said. He liked the speed of his duck taped misery – chicken!

I will not recommend going to Korketrekkeren on a beautiful, sunny sunday when the metro doesn’t go all the way up. The buses showed up quickly, but there was always some people that didn’t get into the buses, it took some time to get to Frognerseteren, and the sledge is heavy.

Secondly, there was a LOT of people on Frogneseteren. It seemed like half the population of oslo decided to visit that day.

We had a lot of fun that day, and I will certainly do it again.

How to get there: You take the metro nr. 1 to Frognerseteren

New Years Eve resolutions is usually a running joke most places that last only for a couple of weeks. I didn’t make a new years resolution, but I did during the beginning of the year make a resolution for 2009 – to loose 10 kilos. The resolution kind of grew out of necessity and that the time was right for dealing with that issue. And let the celebration begin, because GOAL ACHIEVED!

Yes, I made it. Actually, at the time of writing I have lost 11 kilos, but who’s counting…. except me I have already started noticing the benefits like my shape has improved and when I go shopping for clothes – no more X-large section for me! I can’t sing high enough on how wonderful it is to go shopping and find beautiful clothes in my size that looks good on me. No more size elephant for me!  And I am never going to gain that weight back on, that’s for sure. I still have some mileage (read: kilos) to go before I’m happy with my weight, but there is only time separating me from that place.

I have changed my lifestyle, and I thought I would share a little bit about what I have done to get there. I have done it on my own, not counted calories, joined any diet program or even had a feeling that I was on a diet.

Get clear
I love Oprah (with her radio show as my favourite), and she have had several shows with her personal trainer, Bob Greene. His viewpoint is that excess weight is a symptom of underlying feelings that makes a person turn to food as a substitute for whatever that is missing and I mostly agree with him.

I had ended up eating sweets when I felt low, to celebrate and when I wanted some cosiness. Yes, it was emotional eating. I didn’t eat that often, but enough to keep gaining weight over many years. Food (or sweets) can be addictive

Last year I started looking at what wasn’t working in my life, I took an inventory and starting working through what I needed to deal with. Just by doing that internal work a lot of my sweet tooth disappeared.

I have now come into a position that I only feel like eating sweets when I’m bored and since I’m now able to recognize when it happens, it makes it easier to do something about. I try to make sure that I don’t get bored often, and I have no sweets in the house anyway

and that brings me too…..

Detox
Yep, detox – and not the one concerning drugs either.  I started out with MethodDrain Detox which involves mixing some herbal stuff into 1.5 liters of water every day and drinking it for about 20 days. I had heard it was great for loosing weight, but well, it didn’t do wonders with me. It helped me to get enough water in my system (which was great), but in the end I was not sold on this product.

The one thing that did wonders to me was an ayurvedic remedy called ashwaganda. I took it one evening with a little bit of warm milk, and the next morning I felt “clear”. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was like I had been purified and my head was clear, my body felt clear and I had much energy. Now since this epiphany I have used time to get to know ayurvedic medicine and lifestyle more and it has made me into a believer, especially it’s teachings on stress and the digestion.

Stress
According to ayurveda, all diseases and health problems can be related to the digestion. The digestion is the engine, and the food is our gasoline, and in ayurveda the term “you are what you eat” really means something. Stress makes the body toxic, so much so that stress can make the body react to food as if the food is toxic. Ashwaganda is compared to the chinese’s ginseng because it gives energy, but what was important for me was that it cleared the bad effects of stress away from the body.

Sugar
I cut away sugar, honey and artificial sweeteners  from my diet for four weeks. It did wonders – enough said.

Fiber
Fiber is food for the stomach, but not for us (we are not able to extract energy from it). Fiber contains no calories, and is a necessity for the good bacteria’s in the stomach. If you don’t know about the importance of fiber, I suggest reading up on it. Every day I make myself a blueberry smoothie with psyllium husk (usually as breakfast). The husk swells up to 20% of its own size and attaches itself to fat and undigested (read: rotten) food that the digestion is unable to use. It’s great for clearing the system if one feel bloated. Humans should get about 30 grams of fiber every day to have a healthy digestion and evacuation.

Hot water
According to ayurvedic and chinese medicine, drinking hot water increases the digestive fire and clears metabolic waste.

Run of the mill
It’s utterly boring and dependable, but I try to eat every third hour and keep the meals small. And do exercise, and cut down on carbohydrated (bread, pasta, rice) and eat more vegetables. We all know it….

Kari’s mother suggested to take Hangursbanen which is a gondol cable car. Again it was a bit of walking…

Since I came to voss I had seen people paragliding and they took of from Hangursbanen. Every year there’s a festival in Voss called “Extreme Sports Week” where people compete in kayaking, rafting etc.

View from Hangursbanen where one can see voss on the left there

We decided to take a walk to slondalen today and walk around slondalsvatnet. To get there we parked next to a hostel and started walking Rallarvegen for a kilometer or so. There is really two schools of thought when it comes to hiking and the first one is the most widespread:

1. Walking is the road, light and purpose
2. Get to a beautiful place and stay there to relax for hours, enjoying the view.

I am soundly located in option number two. I see that there doesn’t have to be two schools of thoughts, but norwegians is hellbent on walking, walking, walking. It’s not enough to see beautiful places – we have to be able to say we walked from A to B. There has to be a plan to a trip – a grander design than just viewing the surroundings.

Kari is soundly located in number 1, and I don’t think option nr. 2 has ever crossed her mind.

So as we continued walking I (again) started souring up more and more. It was such a beautiful place with water and mountains all around, and I would have been perfectly happy to just be there. Unfortunately, that was not in Kari’s mind, and since I carried the food and the heater (or whatever a “stormkjøkken” would be called) we couldn’t seperate. I was sick of walking – or, I like walking, but long hiking trips, almost every day for over a week?

Not really. But it was well worth the trip.

View into slondalen

View from the end of slondalsvatnet

Kari’s mother has been involved in the handicap association in Voss, and the association has a cabin at Grønlivannet, a truly beautiful place. Even though we drove the whole way up there and just stayed there, I was exhausted afterwards and stayed in bed for some time.

We only went for an easy walk this day. Pictures of Raundalselven with Horndalssnuten in the background. Getting to know voss and it’s surroundings with a local is nice

I was still in recovery mode from sickness (and other female issues), when Kari’s mother decided we should go up the same mountain that the cabin was located in. I was told that it wasn’t such a long trip, so I went along in blissfull ignorance. The first kilometer or so was okey, no problem. But then the climbing began and it was steep. I had to go at my own pace to ensure that I didn’t over extend myself, and I’m happy I did. Halfway there my water bottle was empty and there was no water in sight anywhere, but again I was told it was “just around the corner”. I continued walking but I just soured more and more. Just before I was about to say “fuck it”, they shouted: We’re here!

So I got up.

View from the cabin in the afternoon. The cabin was located high up in the mountain so it gave us a great view of the valley. We often got to see the clouds that was in the valley. We even saw clouds being made in the valley (the ground was warmer than the air).