Category Archives: health & fitness

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

health & fitness Leave a comment

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.

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Vicious Circle

I’ve been feeling kind of meh for the past few weeks. I haven’t had a proper workout since before Thanksgiving — some I skipped because I had other obligations, some I skipped because I was tired and I used that as an excuse (can’t have me lifting with bad form and hurting myself), and some I just didn’t feel like doing. (So much for that Discipline Over Motivation thing.)

Whether as a result of not working out or just correlated with it, I’ve also been extra stupid tired lately. Tired and hungry is a Very Bad Combination for me in the evenings, because my lizard brain goes foraging for food and doesn’t quit. Then I also stay up later when I get stupid tired, just because I don’t think to check the clock and get my ass upstairs at a reasonable hour. Then, because I’m overtired and I ate so late in the evening, I have trouble getting to sleep. Once I do get to sleep, I have trouble getting up (I’ve overslept my alarm every single day this week).

I’ve also been rocking crazy vivid dreams that don’t feel particularly restful, like last night’s dream about me being incarcerated and slated for execution because of a traffic violation, and my dream-world attorney was dead and his son had started a restaurant instead of continuing the practice, so I had no representation. Especially being an atheist, the You’re Gonna Die Soon dreams are extra super unrestful.

I’ve been dealing with early morning headaches and general fatigue all week, and today my eyes are visibly puffy. I’ve gained a few pounds over the past several weeks. I feel nasty, both physically and mentally.

I’ve just been in a fuck-all mood lately, too. I’m tired and I don’t give a shit. I try not to let it affect my interactions with others; unfortunately, that extra social effort during the day means I sometimes snap at my son in the evenings when I’m extra tired. Which makes me feel like an ass.

It’s dark and cold and I’m tired and irritable. I don’t want to be active; I’d rather park myself in front of the TV and eat lots of carbohydrates.

Which is exactly what I don’t need.

It doesn’t help that it’s the Christmas Season, which means I’m supposed to be cheery and generous and OMG It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year — and I only got one one batch of chocolate chip cookies baked and in the deep freeze before my brain was like NOPE. FUCK IT.

I have a long weekend coming up (I had to use my last two Personal Days before they expired), so hopefully that will recharge me and help me get back on track. I’ll spend some time sleeping in (“No waking Mommy up before 8:00”) and baking cookies with my son and enjoying my husband’s company for Date Night and getting my hairs did on Monday morning.

I know I need to rein in my evening eating. I need to get back to being active at least three days a week (preferably daily). I also need more sleep than the average bear — nine hours  a night is just right for me, and the seven I’ve been getting just ain’t cutting it.

As with so many other aspects of my life, I know what to do. I just need to do it.

I wonder if I should bring this up to my CNP at my next visit. I wonder if being meh for a few-week stretch every few months constitutes clinical depression that requires medical attention. I don’t know. For me, this is normal. When I neglect myself, it shows. When I feed and exercise myself properly, I’m fine.

It’s just a matter of a.) identifying what tips the dominoes and b.) determining what it takes to stop the cascade and right things again.