Day 3: A Few Steps, A Few Setbacks, and A Few Words about Vitamin Supplementation

Today was more promising than the last two. Here are my fetus steps:

1. Ate a small breakfast and lunch with the kids.
2. Selected a multi-vitamin program and choked them down -- twice.
3. Walked by the dog for 20 minutes. 4th Stooge accompanied us on his bike.
4. Picked up work-out videos and vegetarian cookbook at the library.
5. Saw The Therapist for tea and catch-up since she's been living in Europe for the past four months. She survived getting stranded in an airport for 4 days with her two young boys and husband. They stood on line for 11 hours and had to subsist for a whole day on a piece of bread because they couldn't get food. Her laptop and precious belongings were also stolen. When I asked why she didn't have a nervous breakdown as I would have, she said her husband reminded her, "At least we're not dead."

This is why she's The Therapist. She's got a good attitude.

Here's what didn't work out:

1. Didn't clean the house. A carpet of dog hair and debris seems to be growing on top of my hardwood floors.
2. Didn't do laundry. There are 4 loads to clean and fold.
3. Didn't use the work-out videos or vegetarian cookbook.
4. Attempted to put a shelf together to manage the holiday toy clutter in the house. Put pieces in backwards. After Alpha Male alerted me to my mistake, I took it apart and broke the connecting pieces. Will return shelf tomorrow.

Few Words about Vitamin Supplementation

Hopefully, I'll be able to share some knowledge I've gathered from researching what I need to do to achieve the Trophy Wife Resolution. Starting small, I investigated vitamin supplements. Do I really need them and why? If so, how much and for how long?

In our fast-food climate, most people could probably use a few vitamin supplements, especially vitamin D, which is all the rage now to prevent almost everything from osteoporosis to multiple sclerosis. Truth is you don't need to buy a pill to get more vitamin D. Just hang outside in the sun for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the latitude of where you are located and how dark your skin color is (darker skin tones need more sun exposure to get the appropriate amount of vitamin D). Nor do you need to spend $35 on a jar of multi-vitamins that contain more than the recommended daily values. Unless you don't eat at all and you avoid the sun, you're getting some vitamins. Specifically, you may want to make sure you have enough of several essentials: vitamin C, vitamin D, folic acid, and calcium, to name a few.

Being on the cookie diet for the past year and receiving a diagnosis of osteopenia, I definitely need more vitamin D and calcium. While the Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling couldn't prove that vitamin C could cure cancer or the common cold, it's probably a good idea to take some because he lived until he was 93, appeared to be productive until the end, despite having Bright's disease and other ailments, and was one of four people in the world to win multiple Nobel Prizes. Not only was be obviously smart, he was doing something right with his life. Aside from preventing neural tube birth defects, folic acid will probably the next "it" supplement in years to come as it has shown to help heart health also.

Knowing if you are getting the right amount of a vitamin is actually the trickiest part. Like most school lunches in the Midwest, the daily recommended values haven't been updated by the Food and Drug Administration since 1968! Now, nutritionists say to look at DRIs (dietary reference intakes), which have been updated. Instead of the FDA site, you'll find them at the USDA site. However, when I went traveled to various stores, from GNC, the supermarket to CVS, I couldn't find DRIs on most product labels. At the end of the day, you have to do your homework by investigating what works for your age, gender, as well as taking into consideration any medical conditions you may have as there is no one-size fits all vitamin solution for everyone.

After article and in-store research of a variety of brands, I picked up Women's One-A-Day for $6.99. Centrum Silver (and no, I'm not 50), was my other pick. They both have all the right stuff in moderation. For example, the daily recommended allowance for vitamin A is at 50%. Vitamin A is great for the eyes. However, too much vitamin A can lead to toxic effects, resulting in bone loss, liver damage and a whole other list of nasties. (GNC's vitamins all have vitamin A at 100%; the average person's diet will be getting vitamin A from other sources.) Those who take blood thinners, like Coumadin, need to be careful about taking Vitamin K. Cancer patients also need to monitor their vitamin intake as it can conflict with chemo treatments. The GNC Women's Mega vitamins for $35 contained one supplement with 3233% the recommended daily allowance and another with 2000% the recommended daily allowance. Why would anyone need thousands more of the recommended daily allowance in anything? More is not necessarily better.

Since I reached my peak bone mass at age 35, was already diagnosed with osteopenia and know that my skeleton can only shrink from here, I'm also taking one additional calcium supplement. Calcium needs to be taken in divided doses to maximize absorption.

Now that I'm choking down two horse tablets a day, let's see how long this lasts or if I'm prompted to invent a more innovative way to take them.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something. If anyone needs references, please comment below and I'll forward them your way!