Learning! F4LBR #4

Going camping with my teammates this weekend—bike, camp, bike!

Meanwhile, earlier this week I did a Flat Fix clinic with a rally veteran, Steve. He did a Hill Climbing clinic last month, which was excellent, so I knew this would be a good one. 

One of the great things about this adventure is all the people I’m meeting along the way—it’s a real community! I feel like I really am going to end up with Friends For Life at the end of it.

Here are some great photos Steve took on Tuesday—love the one where I’m framed in the wheel!

Really learned a lot from this! I thought I knew how to change a flat, having done it soooo many times, but a few tips and tricks really make it all smoother. Having tire irons and a decent pump help a lot too—I love my floor pump, but it was great to give the portable a test run. Thanks Steve!

Overdue check-in

Said I was gonna do this daily, whoops...

Firstly, my physio asked me to keep track of how long it lasts when he “fixes” me, quantified as “when can you do a shoulder check on your bike.”

Last time he fixed me was Friday. Saturday was fine. Sunday was twingy. Monday I didn’t ride but tried turning while walking and it was twingy. Tuesday was definitely the “this hurts” stage. 

Secondly, the proton pump inhibitor (PPI—did I remember that right?) effect. 

So far, no change to cough.

Had one night last week which was extremely bad, up in the night with heartburn on top of coughing and indigestion. Things have settled down but I am still coughing. Also having mucous in stool, which is weird but not a problem otherwise.

Trying again

Well I haven’t been tracking or doing any (intentional) exercise lately. But I have been keeping busy. 

Now that I’m all-natural with the hormones and just experiencing perimenopause as it happens, I find my appetite and metabolism fluctuate like crazy. Just uncontrollable hunger at times, and my weight climbed to a number where I didn't want to weigh myself (hence the no tracking). Then I had a very light period and my appetite vanished and I could honestly feel my body burning through reserves. Just snapped back to the goal weight I achieved in the spring. Hormones, man. It’s wild. 

Anyway, I need to start tracking again, and find better ways to manage the swings than eating a ton of raw cookie dough. 

And I haven’t done “progress pics” in a year and a half! Here’s the last one for comparison. I don’t see a difference? No idea what I weighed then either, since the demise of Fitday…

(Tried to recreate the pose as exactly as possible)

The charts

Looking at Cronometer this morning, it’s amazing how clear and obvious the stomach flu is:

Can you tell when I got sick?

That day where I had almost nothing to eat or drink—I think just ginger ale—that corresponds exactly with losing 5 lbs overnight. 

But amazingly it’s stayed that way, despite my intake being pretty much back to normal. Which is to say, there are days I consume twice as many calories as "they" say I should. 

Could it be I’ve reset my set point? I read something a while ago about resetting set points by spending a period of time maintaining a specific weight instead of trying to change it. When I looked for the post again I couldn’t find it, so I don’t remember the details. 

Years ago—around when I started this blog actually—I lost a bunch of weight all at once, and an endocrinologist told me that since my weight had gone to an amount less than but still easily within 10% of the weight I had maintained throughout my 20s, it was just my body “snapping back” to the weight it wanted to be. Weird to think I weigh even less now, about 20 lbs less than 25 years ago. 

Could this be my new normal?

A nice surprise

I have had this top and skirt for ages, long enough that I haven’t worn it in years. The neckline of the top never sat quite right, and the skirt had torn along the seam at the back where the kick pleat is. It was on my long-term list of things to fix before buying new fabric (cross off 3 to-dos before getting 1 treat).

Being so long since I’d worn it meant no fear of messing up—it might as well be rags anyway, the worst that could happen is I’d have more closet space! 

So with the help of “mending tape” I fixed the tears and resewed the seam, which meant taking it in by about an inch through the hips. Without trying it on first to see if it would even fit.

Guess what—fits fine, even a little roomy! So happy right now, it’s two wins in one! A “new” outfit and evidence that all this cycling and careful eating (if only due to gastritis) has made a difference!

Linen/cotton 2-piece dress

Conflicting feelings

Got my first “lucky you” on the weekend. 

As in, lucky to get stomach flu so you lost some weight. 

The thing is, I wouldn’t mind a simple “you look great” or something. I know some people are bothered by any comment about weight loss, but I don’t mind a straight up compliment, especially if someone thought it was a result of hard work! 

I don’t feel lucky to have had days of diarrhoea and vomiting followed by weeks of upset stomach. 

I do fully intend to keep the weight off now that it’s gone though. 

It was really just “that last 5 lbs” that everyone struggles with, but losing them really does make a difference. I like how my clothing feels. I like how I look. I feel vaguely guilty for liking these things, because of the bombardment of messages from the media that basically say women should never feel good about themselves, including—especially?—if their feelings are connected to weight loss, because we’re supposed to prioritize other people’s feelings above our own. 

Hence conflicting. I have been feeling under the weather for over a month now, and I want to enjoy the one positive thing that came out of that. I hate how hard it is to just feel my feelings independently of the world’s expectations and impositions!

I did it!

I survived!

Can’t help remembering when I started running, how many times I started Couch to 5k and gave up on week 4, running the Bunny Hop 5k in Barrie for Deaf Access Simcoe-Muskoka and collapse at the end from exhaustion, even last year when I almost gave up at the 8k mark in the Sporting Life 10k. 

This year felt so much better. Even biked there and back. I will never be a fitness nut (nor do I want to be) but feeling strong feels good. And it also feels good to know that making plans to support my best possible run actually does make a big difference. 

This time I focused on feeling good and finishing strong. I gave myself small goals along the way (don’t be the first to stop and walk, run at least 5k before taking a walk break, make it to the turning point before taking a walk break, make it to the bottom of the big hill before taking a walk break) and made decisions to support my needs beforehand as well as along the way (good sleep before, remembered to take vitamins, drank a V8, yogurt and a banana for breakfast, juice break at the turning point, dumping water on my head as needed to stay cool and fresh, a handful of dates in my pocket for energy, walk break up the hill), so I’d be in a good position to finish strong (one of the tenets of Slow Jogging being that you remember the run based on how you finish so if you finish strong you’ll feel good about the whole thing). Also helped knowing that the kid was up early and had a plan to get to the finish line.

And I exceeded my fundraising goal for the Cancer Society! Best way to remember and honour my mum this Sunday before Mother’s Day.

Before 

After—still smiling!

Doctors hate her for this one simple trick

A month since I posted? Whoops!

I have been keeping up with walking, cycling, and trying to tap. I am no Ann Miller, but I like to think I’m less bad than when I started?

Anyway, here’s a little chart showing my weight change over the past year. It’s a comfort to see it all laid out—a consistent downward trend, as long as I keep tracking! Other things I think help: remembering vitamins, eating meat every day for iron, getting good sleep, and therapy. Where my feelings are at makes a huge difference in how I take care of myself. I don’t sleep well when I’m anxious. And if I don’t go to bed on time, I’ll eat junk food. 

I guess that’s my number one heath thing: sleep. Without good sleep, everything else falls apart—I feel anxious, I don’t exercise, and I eat junk. 

But they’re all interconnected. I sleep better when I exercise and do my therapy homework. I eat better when I do those things, too. But I can’t/don’t do them if I haven’t been getting good sleep.

Or maybe my number one thing is vitamins. If I don’t take my vitamins and iron, I am ravenous. And especially without iron, I get restless legs, which keeps me up. 

I guess maybe everything is my number one? I guess I should abandon the idea of a “number one” altogether!

There is no one. There is only all, interconnected.

Guilt over a goal achieved

And embarrassment that I let the wellness industry get so far inside my head!

I haven’t been tracking everything every day, because two months of diligence in that department is enough to build the habits I need to maintain. Number one being take your vitamins every day! And meat every day to help build my iron stores. Makes such a huge difference to be properly nourished. I find it makes me more likely to eat less because my body isn’t aching to be nourished. For example, yesterday I made two nikumaki for a portable dinner between running errands and volunteering, but I was sufficiently suffonsified after one.

Nikumaki: meat-wrapped onigiri

Anyway, I’ve been continuing my morning situps, tap dance, riding my bicycle as much as possible, and getting outside for at least a walk around the block every day. And it’s working! I'm down a pound today, just one pound away from my goal weight. More importantly, I could tell before I weighed myself, because the difference, though small, is obvious. So I was excited to weigh myself, and giddy at the number, and then had a reflexive “don't feel happy about weight loss” admonition creep into my brain.

Why does this stuff have to be so fraught? I mean I know why; centuries of everyone feeling free to critique women’s bodies for being the wrong shape, and decades of backlash against that.

Anyway the other thing I’ve been working on lately—at the behest of my therapist—is rewarding myself. Recognizing when I’ve done something difficult, acknowledging that effort, and rewarding myself for doing the work. And it’s hard! My last blog post was all about that. 

But this morning, in addition to my usual therapy homework, I had an additional task that I’ve been avoiding, and I got it started. Extra difficult, so I extra earned my reward. Plus achieving another step towards my weight goal.

So I’m typing this really to remind myself—I have achieved something, and I do deserve a reward.

Pain au chocolat and Mexican drinking chocolate

A little progress report

Just checking in with myself as I am feeling blah, but there is progress, even if it’s not much! 

Weight tracking for the month of September

I seem to have gotten my period again, which is annoying to say the least, although at least it’s not horrifying like it was last spring. It’s just very random—one week into a new month of pills—which is disconcerting. But if nothing else it explains why I was feeling tired/constipate/blah last week. And now that it’s happening, my progress is on a downward slope again, which is nice.

More generally, I’ve been mostly meeting my goals—situps every morning, outside for at least a mile or two every day, stretching before bed and turning off the wifi, remembering my vitamins—so if there’s lack of progress, I know it’s not because of something I failed to do. Just the randomness of hormones. Need to remind myself of that—change what I can, accept what I can’t, and know the difference!

Tracking over time

Because it came up in a discussion...

I use fitday.com, even though it's a bit sad, simply because I have used it since 2005. Seriously coming up on an anniversary here. And tracking over time is fascinating.

Guess when I had my baby?

Guess when I had my appendix out?

Guess when I had an incredibly difficult year with no time for myself at all, ending with the difficulties that marked the start of this blog?

It's interesting to look back and see how, despite the various peaks and valleys, things have remained largely the same for close to 20 years. And how my weight corresponds to the amount of time I spend caring about myself. I guess that is the real lesson underneath it all. 

Why daily weighing is better

I know some people don’t like weighing—especially daily—because it leads to disordered eating. But for me it tends to help, when I remember to do it! 

Here’s why:

Nothing moves in a straight line.

If you’ve ever looked at stock market values, temperature changes, basically anything you can track over time, you'll know that they’re always ziggedy-zaggedy, with ups and downs and “corrections.” Tracking daily allows you to get used to the uppy-downy, and know that it’s part of an overall pattern. Tracking once a week, or less regularly, you only get the blips, not the full picture. I was reminded of this recently by a progress graph someone posted online:

Lots of ups and downs. This is a mountain range! Now, imagine if they had only weighed on three days over that period. They might think their weight was following the orange line:

This line—although accurate—only tells a small part of the story, and might make it seem like their weight is basically static, with a slight increase! But look at the overall trend:

It’s going down. You see that when you track every day, not when you only track once in a while. You can also start to see patterns, recognize good days and bad days, maybe figure out triggers, but more importantly, know that even if you’re going in the wrong direction one day, you can correct your course, you aren’t permanently derailed.

I've only been keeping track for a week this time, and not remembering to weigh daily, but enough to notice the usual two-steps-forward-one-step-back pattern. And the important thing to remember about that is it’s still a net of one step forward towards the goal.

1 week progress report

Well it's been a week since I started trying in earnest - tracking nutrition, getting back to running, doing situps in the morning, etc.

My general goal is to try to eat around 1500 calories every day, get my RDA in iron, remember my vitamins (they make such a difference!), eat meat every single day, get some kind of miles every day (run/walk/bike), and get my calorie expenditure over 2000 calories daily through exercise, and a few other daily selfcare goals (writing in my gratitude journal, stretching before bed, getting good sleep, etc.). I feel like writing it out there made it seem like more effort than it actually is. 

Anyway, here are the one-week reports:

(Lack of) Progress Pics

I went for a run this morning! First in many months. It felt good! Temperature was -1°, so a little bit icy in spots, but a great temperature for me. I swear this run - after months of winter inactivity - was easier than any run I went on last summer/fall. I chalk that up to a combination of climate (the heat and humidity kill me, running without sweating is bliss) and iron levels (last summer my ferritin was 3 or 4, now it's up to 13). Amazing the difference eating meat makes! Or eating more meat I should say; I was never vegetarian, but wasn't making the effort to eat meat every day. 

Anyway, I haven't been good about taking progress pics, but thought today would be a good day, to correspond with my first run of the year.