Down one pound at #weightwatchers this week! Feeling pretty good about moving the scale — and my habits — in the right direction.
Category Archives: health & fitness
A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals
Getting Back Under My Oh-Sh!t Weight
My lowest weight ever was 166 pounds, on April 16, 2016.
I hovered around 170 for the rest of that spring and summer. Come November, I started a slow and steady climb up the scale that wouldn’t quit until I reached my “Oh Shit” weight of 180 the following June.
Ever since then, I’ve been wavering around that Oh Shit weight, give or take a few pounds. I’ll have good weeks and not-so-good weeks, but the scale pretty much hovers in the same spot, on average. My Oh Shit weight has become more of a status quo, a fact of life. I live in my Oh Shit weight, so I may as well be comfortable with it.
This year has seen me regain some momentum in the right direction.
Return of Exercise Logging
Once upon a time, I used both Fitbit and DailyMile to log my fitness, for group classes and walks and runs and lifting and whatnot. Then I decided I was tired of logging things in multiple places, so I ditched DailyMile. With it, though, went any history of progress, as it included moods, free text, equipment, tagging, and other features that Fitbit doesn’t.
While I do track what I do and how much, I haven’t been tracking how it went. So, in an effort to a.) get my sorry butt to the fitness center more often and b.) remember what the heck I did there, I’m going to start logging the deets here.
For example, today’s kickboxing class was a good class overall — got my heart rate up, got in the zone — but since I’d tweaked my back while gardening on Saturday, I made sure to take the high impact stuff down a notch. Low-jacks instead of jumping jacks, normal squats instead of power squats, high-mark-time (marching-band style) instead of “jumping rope.” That doesn’t mean I took it easy, though: even when I was modifying moves, I tried never to phone it in. (We were all just about out of juice with 15 minutes still to go — including the instructor!)
I also noticed that my hip flexors were especially tight afterward, and I stretched as best I could after the traditional post-class ab crunch session.
Next time? Eat a better breakfast — a Pop-Tart and a latte didn’t cut it — and show up early enough to get my usual lower-body stretching done before class.
I’m kind of on a roll with weight loss and developing healthier habits. Let’s see if I can ramp up my activity, too.
Blogging of a Personal Nature
I read an article recently on kottke.org that assured me that I am not, in fact, the last personal (i.e. non-topical) blogger out there. In reading some of the blogs he referenced, I realized that I haven’t been keeping up with regular, “real” updates. Sure, every month I post a Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post, and I’ve been getting behind on my Cookbook of the Month posts, and I’ve completely stopped posting monthly weight updates (because what’s the use), and I have several somewhat time-sensitive posts in the queue — mostly about the vacation we took last month. But the old-school life update post has become kind of a rarity lately — which is a shame, since so many minor happenings will slip past undocumented if I’m not careful. I don’t really journal longhand unless I’m trying to work through something I can’t really post online, so if it’s not here, it’s probably not anywhere to be found. Except in my brain, and that’s kind of iffy the older I get.
So, here’s one topic I’ve been meaning to bring up again: depression.
Specifically, treatment via medication.
Vacation Epiphany
Last summer, I tried on my swimsuit(s) for the first time in about six years. Connor and I would be going to Dayton to visit my grandparents, and we’d be swimming in the hotel pool during our downtime. My tankinis from 2010 were at least a size too big… but the bikini top I’d worn a grand total of one time still fit, thanks to being a halter with ties at the back and neck. I didn’t have time to shop for a new suit; the bikini top (with a slightly oversized bottom) would have to do.
Surprisingly enough, the two-piece was very comfortable to wear (apart from me constantly tugging at the too-large bottoms). Mentally, it helped that Mom and Connor and I were the only people in the pool that afternoon — and Mom kept telling me how good I looked in my two-piece.
I started to believe it.