Posts Tagged ‘health and wellness’

Weight-loss stuff

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

I’m going to write about exercise and weight loss and all of that in this post, which is something I try not to write about much because (1) I’m not very good at it and (2) I think it’s kind of boring.  But I want to let you all know what’s happening with this.  I’ll try not to write about it too much in the coming months.

So, in my last post, I mentioned my doctor appointment and that I’ve got a follow-up in six months to check on my weight-loss progress.  I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about how I’m going to approach this problem.

Here’s what I’ve got so far.  I have an account at MyFoodDiary.com and I know that if I actually go on there and track what I’m doing, I will lose weight.  I lost weight this way before—exercising and tracking my calories through this program.  So I’m doing that again.  Now, it only works if I actually go on there and enter in what I’m doing and I really don’t like doing that.  It’s a pain in the butt.  So my incentive to do this is that if I can log my food for 30 days in a row, I’m going to get a massage.  I love massages, but it’s been over a year since I last got one.  So!  Goal = 30 days straight of logging my food = Reward = MASSAGE.

I have a set of cards on the wall of my desk at work under my clock that count up to 30 (0-3 on one set and 0-9 on the other) and I have a tick mark on my mirror at home and I’m going to keep track.  I’ll also keep track through MFD, but I’m learning about visual management at work and the affectivity of it.

On my mirror, I’ve also written “Log your food!  Be nice to Justin – you asked for his help.”  Because he’s wonderful and gives me gentle prodding about logging and exercising and what I should and shouldn’t eat, and I get cranky at him.  So I’m going to try very hard to not do that anymore.  I appreciate his help. And I did ask him to help me.  So it’s not at all fair for me to get grumpy at him.

And that goes for the rest of you, too.  If you want to prod me about how things are going, I’m going to try very hard not to get grumpy about it.  So, please!  Go ahead and prod.  Send me emails and call and ask how I’m doing and if I’ve logged my food and if I’ve exercised today and if I’ve had enough water to drink and give me recommendations on different things I should try.  Because I have a wonderful bunch of family and friends and if I can’t accept help from all of you, then I’m in trouble.

I’m also putting in a request to get a nurse to help me.  My employer is starting up a program to help us improve our health and one of the issues that they’ll help with is being overweight.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen with that, exactly, but at this point, I’m willing to take any help I can get.

Okay, so that covers my calorie counting and accepting help from everybody possible.

Currently, this is my exercise program:  Monday and Wednesday night, I go to Zumba class.  Saturday morning, I go to yoga class.  That leaves Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday on my own.  What I’ve been trying to do is to practice Zumba or yoga on my own or do an exercise video.  Now that the weather is going to get nicer, I’ll be adding more outdoor activities.  Got to catch the weather between when it’s too chilly for rollerblading and too hot!  It’s not a long window.  In the summer months, I’ll get back into swimming again. 

What I’m missing is weight training.  I think it’s something I’ll want to be doing, I’m just not sure exactly when.  Yoga has a lot of muscle work in it that works with body weight, but I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be hitting the weights at the gym, too.  I’m still trying to figure that one out.

My overall goal is to lose 50 pounds in the next six months.  It’s a strong goal and I know that.  I’m going to have to work very hard to try to make that goal.  But I think that setting a goal that’s fairly difficult but not completely unattainable is a good idea.  That’s a loss of 2 pounds a week, which is healthy for my current weight and it’s going to be healthy for a long while.  Once I get past this first 50, it’s going to slow down, but for this first half, it’s attainable.

I need to lose nearly 100 pounds.  I’m sitting at 232 pounds right now.  I want to get down to 140-ish.  By my doctor appointment in six months, I want to be at 180.

And that’s that!  More information than you probably wanted to hear about my weight-loss situation.  :)

I’m on day 2 of logging my food.  Only 28 more to go before I earn my massage!

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Loving the fish oil pills

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Yesterday afternoon I had my follow-up check-up for the appointment I had three months ago. (Operation Crazy Owl continues.)

At that time, my triglycerides were up and my cholesterol wasn’t where it should be and my blood sugar was higher than it should be and it just wasn’t good blood-work all the way around.  I had three months to do something about it.

At my appointment yesterday, my triglycerides were much lower than they had been (by about half), my cholesterol was much better, and my blood sugar was much better.  My weight is still bad.  And a few of those numbers could handle going a little further toward the “good” side of things.  But it’s doing better.  I’ve been taking fish oil pills with my multivitamin every day, and I think that’s had a lot to do with it, plus regular exercise.

So now I just have to work on logging my food better and actually work on getting my weight down.

One of the other things I talked with her about was my asthma.  Do you remember that terrible cold I got back before Christmas?  (I’ve been sleeping.)  It’s was a bad cold and it settled into my chest and did unpleasant things.  Since then, I’ve had to take an inhaler almost every time I exercise.  And sometimes just because it’s cold out and I’m feeling short of breath.  It hasn’t been fun and I don’t like this relapse of my asthma symptoms. 

My current doctor hasn’t actually had me as a patient with asthma symptoms – they recessed back around 2005-ish.  So at my appointment, she’s explaining to me the differences between emergency inhalers and maintenance inhalers and all these other things that I know SO WELL by now, let me tell you.  It was kind of funny.  Seriously, I’ve dealt with asthma for well over half of my lifetime.  I understand how it works.

Anyway, she gave me a prescription for Symbicort as a maintenance inhaler and a refill on the emergency inhaler and we’re going to try and see if the maintenance inhaler can fix whatever problem has been happening down in these lungs of mine and see if I can’t get the symptoms to go away again.  I think I damaged them a little bit with the cold and they haven’t been able to properly heal – if that’s even an idea that works medically.  I don’t know.  But I think that taking the meds for a little while will help heal my lungs enough that I can go back to being asymptomatic again, and non-medicated again, which would be lovely.

I have a return appointment in 6 months to check on my progress with getting my numbers even better – my cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, and, most significantly, my weight.  We’ll check on the status of my asthma, too.  But for the most part, I’m in better health than I was the last time I went in to see her and that makes me feel good.

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It’s raining

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Well, we’re finally into March and we’ve started it out with a bout of social anxiety.  I got home last night and cleaned house instead of going to Zumba because just the thought of going out and being around other people made my head swim.  I couldn’t do it.  So I dusted and cleaned floors and tidied things up; Justin put stuff into the attic, shook rugs, and tidied the upstairs.  And when I had worked off enough agitation, we sat down for dinner and then cuddled in front of TV before going to bed.

Today, we’re following up with typical March weather – it’s dark and rainy.  It is, on the upside, the kind of rain that smells like it’s going to make the grass grow.  It’s a refreshing change from rain that smells like winter, gets into my shoes and makes me cold all day long.

We’ve had an interesting couple of days around here.  Friday, I was at work from 7:30 until 6:00.  On a day where I would normally work only 4 hours, a 10-hour day is absurd.  I was really irritated by the whole thing.  I mean, sure, overtime pay.  But my Friday!  I had plans for that afternoon!  All of which are now just sitting on my list of things to do and hoping that I have time to do them this coming Friday.  It isn’t looking good for that list.

For dinner on Saturday, Justin and I made “Jade and Ivory Pasta,” which is a recipe that came with my wok and we’ve made a couple of times before.  It’s fettuccini, broccoli, and chicken stir-fried in a sauce with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sherry (that we substituted with red wine vinegar), and a couple other things.  When we got to the end of the meal, Justin’s tongue went numb.  His throat swelled up a little and he felt about as miserable as a person with an allergic reaction could feel without needing to go to the emergency room.  And we sat there, waiting to see if we would have to go to the ER, because the last time this happened to him, he spent more than a week in the hospital.  He can’t take Benedryl because it reacts badly with his system, so all he could do was brush his teeth, rinse with Listerine, and wait.

We still have no idea what set him off, so I’m eating all the left-overs while he feels miserable.  His throat and tongue are still raw and sensitive, with the unfortunate side-effect of being completely unable to taste anything.  It makes me feel sorry for people who have ageusia and never taste anything, and their spouses, for whom it’s probably almost as frustrating.

But we’re very thankful that it wasn’t worse than it was.  Meals that don’t land one of us in the ER = success!

Anyway, that’s pretty much the excitement that’s been happening around here lately.  I’ll try to write about something more interesting soon-ish.

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Operation Crazy Owl – hard boot

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Exercise is hard, ya’ll.  Just in case you didn’t know.

After my last post about exercise, I had a great conversation with Mom about how I should work with my body in exercise instead of against it.  My body doesn’t want to get up a 5 o’clock in the morning.  There were things about it that I enjoyed and that were working out really well for me, but I got more sick and was more tired when I did that then any other time.

So I’m not doing that anymore.  Instead, I’m working to consistently do a long, cario-working exercise session 5 times a week.  Something that I love.  Something that I regret missing if I don’t do.  I’ve been doing Zumba on Monday and Wednesday, something like yoga or dancing in my living room on other nights, yoga on Saturday.  And I have been having a blast!  I don’t know if it’s doing much good at helping me lose weight, but I’m having a better time.

I’m trying to get out and go on walks at lunch, too.  It’s nice – getting out of the building and into the light and fresh air.  I’m having trouble being consistent with it because of either having to work through my lunch hour or because of bad weather.  I should find a way to walk inside during rainy weather.  Or, like today, when the wind was so strong it kept blowing my skirt up.  But it’s something else I’m doing that I’m enjoying.

And that’s about all I have to say about that at the moment.  It’s a boring post when all I write about is exercise.  :)

Of course, what I’m left writing about then is work and that’s even worse.  I don’t want to write about work.

So I think I’m going to sit back and watch TV for a little while before heading to bed.  I hope you’re all having a great day!

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Operation Crazy Owl – reboot

Monday, January 11th, 2010

I fell off the gosh-awful early in the morning exercising bandwagon.  Vacations, you know?  You don’t have to get up early in the morning because you’ve got all day free, and then you stay up too late because you got up so late, and it’s impossible to get up early the next morning, even if you wanted to, but you don’t.

I started back to work last week and I should have been back at it, but I just couldn’t pull myself into doing it.  I did it once, on Tuesday or Wednesday, and there were so many people there at 5:00 AM that it was ridiculous.  New Year’s Resolutioners.  And it wasn’t as enjoyable as it had been the last time, and I was just so terribly tired.

But I felt miserable about it all week.  I never managed to drag myself to the gym at any other time of the day, and I just felt more and more heavy.  I don’t want to be this heavy and flabby and out of shape.  And the only way that’s really going to change is by getting my bottom into the gym.

So I’m back at it again today.  I put together my lunch and my outfit last night before climbing into bed at a reasonable hour.  And I only hit my alarm two times this morning before flopping out of bed and pulling on my gym clothes.  And then I went and lifted weights and worked on the elliptical for a while.  It didn’t feel very good.  The weights were really heavy and my muscles weren’t ready for that kind of work and now I just want to lay my head down on my desk and nap for a little while.  I’m tired.

But I know it’s a good step.  I drank 20 oz of water before leaving for work, I’ve eaten my oatmeal with milled flaxseed, and I’m trying to make good choices today.

And tonight I’ll put together my lunch and outfit and go to bed earlier than I did last night, and I’ll get up tomorrow and do this again.

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