Category Archives: health & fitness

A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals

running 4 Comments

Running

If I searched back through my blog archives, I could probably find an instance or three of me admitting that I knew running would be good for me, if I would just do it. I know I’d find multiple instances of me doing it wrong and kicking my own ass too hard the first time out. I’d find documentation of several false starts, self-proclaimed failures, and lots of excuses.

I’m running my first 5K this coming Saturday.*

Technically, I’ll be run/walking my first 5K, since I can’t run 3.1 continuous miles quite yet. I’m trying really hard not to be embarrassed about this fact, and to just get out and do what I can. I’ll have plenty of opportunity to improve later.

So, how the hell did I even get interested in running? As with many things, the influences came from many directions, and I’m not sure which of the many planted seeds was the one that finally took.

I can tell you that the first time I seriously considered running was after one of my co-workers started running for weight loss back in Spring of 2008. He was using Roy Palmer’s method, and he shared the program with me. I wasn’t quite ripe for running yet, though, even though I knew I should do it.

Some time later, or maybe it was around the same time, I heard about the Couch-to-5K program — I think Mur Lafferty was the first to get C25K on my radar, although I continued to hear about it from other sources, too. Finally, after letting the idea circulate under the surface for a while, I got out and started C25K in March of this year.

Week 1 went great! I did Week 2 twice, since I’d missed a day and didn’t feel comfortable incrementing my run time yet. Week 3 didn’t go so well, and I stopped running for a month or two, then restarted the program in late June. Eventually, I gave up on incrementing my running time and just picked an interval that felt good and went with it.

I’d been toying with the idea of signing up for a 5K when sign-up time came for Race For The Cure. It was to be held in downtown Toledo, and I had a month or so before the race. I’d only been running once every couple of weeks, although I’d been walking two to three miles almost daily. Not surprisingly, when I decided to see how far I could run without stopping, I only made it one mile before I pretty much imploded. I haven’t tried to do that since.

Even though I could easily have run the race with walk breaks, I came up with a boatload of excuses as to why I couldn’t or shouldn’t sign up, and I didn’t. So, when the corporate e-mail came through about the Jingle Bell Run, I felt almost obligated to sign up. In fact, I barely gave it any thought; I signed up the day the e-mail showed up in my inbox.

My training has been sporadic overall: one week, I’ll run/walk 2.5 miles three days out of the week, and the next week I’ll only run 1.5 miles for a day or two. Since I signed up for the Jingle Bell Run, though, my training has been a little more consistent (except for that week when I was sick). Having basically a public performance to prepare for is a big motivator — even more so than the technical shirt I was going to promise myself as a carrot-on-a-stick reward for running three days a week.

I’m curious about how this 5K is going to pan out. Will I love it and want to train to do even better next time (and seek out more wintertime races), will I decide to hang up my running shoes for the winter, or will I go into an all-out fitness backslide?

Even though I can’t run more than a mile yet, I think I’m a runner in my head, finally. A slow runner, but a runner nonetheless.

I’m a runner, and runners run.

* The Jingle Bell Run benefits the Arthritis Foundation. I would humbly encourage you to make a tax-deductible donation, if you haven’t already. Arthritis affects someone you know.

health & fitness 2 Comments

Wisdom Teeth: One Week Later

When I started telling people I was getting my wisdom teeth removed, it seemed like everyone had a story. Some people gave me good advice and helpful tips; others just told me their horror stories (presumably in the hopes that my experience couldn’t possibly be that bad). Probably 75% of everyone’s horror stories ended with, “And then I got dry socket,” which, of course, prompted me to do some Google research, which freaked me out even more.

It was bad enough that I only had a week to prepare — or, come to think of it, maybe that was a good thing. I’d made the appointment immediately after my drill-n-fill the previous Friday — one filling on each side, so my entire jaw was numb (for five hours). I had NOT expected the nice cashier to say, “We have some openings next Friday…”

I had so many questions, but barely managed to enunciate my most important one: “Will I need someone to drive me home?” The cashier had assured me that, no, I wouldn’t be sedated. The procedure would be done under local anesthetic, “just like today!”

Everyone has a wisdom tooth story; now I have one, too. And, as my mother would say, it’s a lot of words.
Continue reading →

health & fitness, the ongoing saga of my job

Adventures in Dentistry

Friday was a little stressful.

We’d had a major network outage on Thursday, so the long-awaited move to production for one of my biggest ongoing projects at work had to be pushed to Friday — and I had a dentist appointment at 3pm, which meant I had to leave work by 2:45 at the latest, which meant that all the planets had to align just right for me to get everything moved into production in time.

I almost didn’t make my deadline. But things came together at the last minute — around 11am, actually, which left me enough time to get everything moved and tested and pass off one final last-minute task to a colleague on my way out the door.

I haven’t checked my work e-mail this weekend (I rarely do), but I’m sure that I’ll go back to work tomorrow to find that one minor (or not-so-minor) detail is keeping everything from getting passed on to the users. Even so, it feels good to have this just about behind me and just about in front of the people who need it.

Stressor #1 out of the way. On to Stressor #2: the dentist.

Of course, I got on I-475 to hightail it to the dentist’s office, and what did I find but bumper-to-bumper traffic. Of course. I contemplated calling and letting the office know that I’d be late, but I knew that their calls go to a central call center, anyway, since they have three or four locations, so by the time my status update got to the people who would need to know, I’d probably be there already. So, I just arrived ten minutes late, and no one seemed to mind.

[ALERT: NEEDLES AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, SHERYL.]

A few minutes after I arrived and checked in, the dental assistant called me back and let me know that she’d be doing my fillings. At this point, I was a little nervous about what was to come, because I’ve heard tales from my co-workers who have been to this same office and had Very Bad Experiences. One guy got injected with anesthetic and his cheek was swollen for a week; another’s wife got her cheek drilled by the dental assistant. So, I made sure to find out who was doing what and confirm which teeth were getting filled. No problems there: the assistant was numbing and injecting, the dentist was drilling, and the assistant would come back to do the actual fillings. OK.

She put the topical numbing jelly on swabs in my mouth and left me with the TV remote for a few minutes, to wait for the gel to take effect.

My dentist’s office is pretty keen: they have wall-mounted flat-panel TVs with cable, and they give the patient the remote. In the rooms where they do drilling and filling, they also have TVs mounted on the ceiling above the chair. I saw that HGTV was on the screen above the chair, and it was showing my favorite show that I haven’t seen in forever because the network switched it to weekday afternoons (the bastards). Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember what channel HGTV was, and I didn’t have time to surf to it before the assistant came back at me with Very Long Needles. So, I had HGTV to watch, but Man V. Food on the Travel Channel on the wall TV as its soundtrack.

So, anyway. Very Long Needles. One in the left jaw, waaaay in the back, then one in the right, then another in the left. Pinch, some pressure, you know the drill. Then they left me alone again to wait for the real anesthetic to kick in. (Still never found HGTV.) Eventually, my entire bottom lip went numb, as did my tongue and jaw, all the way up to my left ear.

The rest really wasn’t so bad. The dentist did some drilling, of which I felt nothing; then the assistant did some filling, which took at least twice as long.

What was slightly embarrassing (and very annoying) was having a non-working tongue and bottom lip for FIVE HOURS after I left the dentist’s office. I had to try to communicate with the nice cashier on my way out, to pay my bill and schedule my wisdom teeth extraction.

I was more than a little shell-shocked when the cashier/scheduler told me that there was an opening next Friday with the oral surgeon. Um, okay. That’s a little sooner than I’d been banking on, but I guess we may as well get it over with. I somehow managed to enunciate, “Will I need someone to drive me home?” and was told that the standard procedure is for local anesthetic only, not full sedation, “so it’ll be just like today!”

Since they fly in their oral surgeon from another state, I had to prepay my co-pay for the extraction at the same time as paying the co-pay for the fillings, which hit me for about $200 total. Tell you what, I’m mighty glad to have insurance.

So, think of me this coming Friday at about 10:30am. I’ll be having my right upper and lower wisdom teeth removed by an oral surgeon — and after looking at the results of a Google Image Search for “wisdom tooth extraction,” I think I’ll be keeping my eyes closed as much as possible during the procedure. I really don’t want to see what implements of destruction this doctor will be wielding at my gums.

weight loss

Acceptance

A few ideas from different sources have recently converged in my brain. They haven’t all quite congealed into a cohesive thought, but they’re trying.

I rode a Segway for the first time at The Next HOPE in New York. Upon seeing the pictures Aaron took of me, my first thought was, “Look how puffy my arms are!” Only secondarily were ideas of a.) how much fun it was to ride a Segway, or b.) how awesome it was to wear a cute girly-cut shirt, because I can now.

Aaron and I had dinner and drinks with a couple in NYC whom we hadn’t seen in person in about four years. Their first comment to us was, “You’re so slim!” Sure, I’ve lost 30 pounds since I saw them last, but Aaron’s lost over twice that much. Mentally, I just assumed that his massive weight loss was making us as a couple look thinner. Hey, I’ll take what I can get!

I watched a TED talk last night (via Whore of All the Earth) about happiness. In a nutshell, psychologist Dan Gilbert posits that the human brain has the capability to synthesize happiness. It comes off like sour grapes… until he relates the results of an experiment with amnesiacs, which supports the hypothesis that this is an innate function of the human brain, rather than a conscious decision to just be happy with what one has.

I related an incident to my Weight Watchers meeting today, one that happened a few months back, in which a co-worker asked me, “So, have you always been overweight?” Rarely have I witnessed the entire meeting room being so taken aback. They all insisted that the comments were harassment, that I should contact HR — but I disagree. At the time, I actually didn’t think much of that particular comment, and merely responded that, yes, I have always been overweight.

I’ve had a hard time wrapping my head around the Fat Acceptance movement — not because I think weight should be a reason to discriminate, but because I’ve always been overweight, and have wanted to be a “normal” weight instead. I have a hard time accepting myself at the size I am, whether it’s 80 pounds overweight or just 20 or 25. I can’t imagine — literally can’t fathom — being obese and seriously happy about it, or even OK with it… because I wasn’t. I’m still not, even though I’m only “overweight” now.

Although I’m no longer an active practitioner of Zen Buddhism, I still appreciate and adhere to many of the teachings. One of these, one that helps me considerably, is the concept of non-attachment. I’m not attached to any given outcome. It’s like ambivalence, but not. It’s not basing my happiness on this or that. This weight or that weight. This job or that job. Kids or no kids. This city or that city. Every outcome has pros and cons, and I don’t need to prefer one over the other. Either can make me happy.

I can be happy as I am now, or I can be happy 20 pounds lighter. Preferably both.

weight loss

Aiming High

When I decided last week that I’d be pushing toward my 10% milestone for this week’s weigh-in, I failed to factor in the Fourth of July.

Good thing, too — I wonder how much I would have gained if I hadn’t? As it is, I’m up 0.2 pounds from last week, which is fine by me.

Even before the Fourth, though, I’d gained a little back of what I’d lost so far. I think it has to do with white rice, especially when served with Mediterranean or Indian food. Either my body doesn’t process it well, or I don’t estimate the serving size well, or both. I guess I’ll be shying away from the rice for a while.

On Sunday, Aaron’s uncle grilled some chicken and German natural casing hot dogs and cheeseburgers, served with baked beans and mustard potato salad (vegan, with jalapeños) and salad and fruit. Ice cream in waffle bowls or cones for dessert. Overall, I ate about 50 Points worth. My normal daily allowance is 25, but I also have 35 Weekly Allowance (aka “Flex”) Points to play with.

So, last week was practice. This week, I’ll be doing the same thing (minus the Sunday extravagance, of course): not eating any of my Flex Points, running three nights a week, only having one sweet treat in the evenings (even though they’re low-cal), and maxing out my fruits and veggies. In addition to that, I’ll be eschewing white rice this weekend — excepting, perhaps, stuffed grape leaves and/or sushi.

Next weekend, there’s nothing fancy going on. In upcoming weekends, I’ll be in New York City; Ann Arbor, MI; enjoying a couple of local ethnic festivals (the International Festival and the Festival of India); and maybe visiting friends out of town.

While I’m not going to eat boring this week by any means, I’m definitely going to avoid unnecessary splurges… so I can splurge when warranted, later on.