Category Archives: health & fitness

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

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January Weigh-In: Back On Track

It’s going to take continued effort to get back to  pre-Thanksgiving levels of fitness and healthy-eating fortitude, but I’m at least headed in the right direction.

I know that my main weakness right now is evening snacking. It has been for some time. I get tired, my mouth gets “wanty” (as opposed to hungry — my Mom used to use that word on me when I was a kid). Some days, I have the staying power to keep myself busy and out of the cupboard; others (like tonight), it’s a struggle or a losing battle.

This week, I’m down about two pounds from last week… but I have a way to go yet. My low weight in August was still ten pounds above Goal.

Now, I know that my weight is just a number on a scale. I also know that I saw what my arms looked like at kickboxing last week; I could tell I’d lost some muscle definition, and I didn’t like it. I also know that my face is rounder than it was, and my midriff is back to being a jiggly spare tire instead of an extra curve.

I’ve gotten so close. I’m seriously curious about how fit I can get, and what I’ll look like when I get there.

It’s just a continual challenge to break old habits and form new ones. I’ve already broken so many over the years — Chinese buffet lunches, Mountain Dew addiction, eating dinner in front of the TV — so I know I can continue to change and improve.

It all happens moment by moment, decision by decision. I read about the idea of each decision you make as being a vote you cast for who you want to become. I like that idea. It helps eliminate the all-or-nothing mentality, and makes the “bad” decisions sting less but mean more.

I’m on the right track, moving in the right direction. Always moving.

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The Family That Shits Together…

Saturday’s regularly scheduled Date Night was cancelled on account of our son puking up blueberries at 6am, then again at 7:30am, then shitting his pants during a poorly-considered trip to Toys-R-Us at 10:30ish.

Of course, since our boy is freaking Wolverine or something, he was doing backward somersaults off the loveseat by the time Daddy woke up around noon-thirty. Still, since bodily fluids were involved, we cancelled the sitter and stayed in for the night. (Alas, we won’t get to see Rogue One in the theater, after all.)

This morning, I woke up feeling fine, but things went south as the morning progressed. By the time I got to my desk, I wanted to lay back down and take a nap. I took some ibuprofen with my morning coffee, and my stomach protested at having anything in it, food or otherwise.

Luckily, I didn’t hurl — although I seriously thought I was going to at one point. I ate a light sushi lunch, and opted for a very light dinner, as well.

(Seems Daddy got a touch of it, too, but a more southerly vector, so to speak.)

Right now, I’m curled up on the couch under an afghan, sipping a mug of peppermint tea and trying not to fall asleep. If I feel like this tomorrow, I’m dropping off my son at Pre-K and coming right back home to bed. I haven’t taken an honest-to-god Sick Day, outside of using half-days for doctor’s appointments, since October 2015.

Man, I feel like ass.

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Back in the Saddle

That would be a funnier title if I attended the spin class at work. Alas, I don’t do spin, since the one time I tried it, I managed to rotate one of my vertebrae. I have no plans to try spin ever again — even though that was a couple years ago.

What I am doing is getting back to my normal fitness routine. When I’m not being a total slacker (as I was over the holidays), I typically attend fitness classes at the work gym over lunch once or twice a week, then do weights once a week. I’ve been mixing it up recently, though, and throwing in some treadmill instead of strength training, just because tracking my cardiovascular fitness with my new Fitbit Charge 2 is a new fun thing for me. #datanerd

(Also because I’d have to adjust my lifting plan to my post-hiatus fitness level, and I haven’t felt motivated to do that yet, truth be told.)

Monday was kickboxing class.

Max heart rate: 156

Continue reading →

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Return of “Why Did I Eat That?”

An old friend reminded me on Facebook (where I cross-post all my blog entries) that I need to do the “thought work” behind the food and fitness decisions that I make.

Sounded like a good time to reinstate the old Why Did I Eat That? exercise.

Friday and Monday were good days.

I don’t have it marked on the graph, but my Daily Target is 30 SmartPoints. I also get a Weekly Allowance of an additional 35 …which didn’t cover my indiscretions this week. Not even close. (But I at least kept tracking.)

Also, for those not familiar with Weight Watchers, the Points system is basically a way to encourage healthy food decisions — it’s loosely based on calories, with emphasis put on fresh fruits and vegetables and lean protein. Saturated fats and sugars are discouraged in the Points algorithm, as well.

So, depending on what I eat, my calories could look just fine, but my SP Values would be all wonky. That said, I ate way more calories than necessary on Tuesday and Thursday — 2,000 and 2,300 respectively. Sunday was around 1,400, but some of it was sugary snacks, which is why my SmartPoints total was all whack. On my two Perfectly On Plan days, I ate 1,200 and 900 calories, with a healthy percentage of my calories coming from protein.

You’ll note that I’m skirting the issue. So, why did I eat that? And what did I eat, anyway?  Continue reading →

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Rookie Mistake

“I haven’t been to a fitness class since the holidays started,” I admitted to no one in particular as I picked out my locker before Wednesday’s kickboxing class. “I’m about to get my butt kicked.”

How right I was.

I made the mistake of jumping back in full throttle, at the same level I’d been participating before I took my little two-month exercise sabbatical. I was so looking forward to kickboxing, and I was also looking forward to my first non-treadmill workout with my new Fitbit Charge 2. I went for it HARD.

Two days later, I can certainly tell I was a little too aggressive with my bob-and-weaves and my jab-cross combinations, among others. My upper arms and the backs and insides of my thighs are stiff as hell.

So, of course I continued my sub-par decision-making by opting out of my previously planned treadmill walk, and choosing instead to spend today’s lunch break querying my WordPress MySQL database in preparation for my annual Year In Review post.

Being muscle-sore has the added bonus of always causing me to weigh in heavier than I would expect, presumably from inflammation and water retention. Add that to a late-night fatigued eating binge (more poor decisions!), and my weight this morning sailed right past Oh Shit and bordered on Jesus Fuck.

Kickboxing is scheduled for Monday of next week. My official Weight Watchers weigh-in is Tuesday, department lunch on Wednesday, then a Barre Sculpt class on Thursday. No matter what the scale says, no matter how I feel physically or mentally, my health — my fitness, physical and mental — has to come first. No more skipping workouts, no more late-night binge eating.

I’ve had a couple of years to stabilize at this weight (or thereabouts). 2017 is the year when I buckle down and take it to the next level.

Whatever that means. I’ll know it when I see it.