It's my anniversary!

I started this blog 12 years ago today! I haven't posted consistently during that time, but it's still interesting (to me) to look back and see what's changed, and what's stayed the same. A few times I've had a rant forming in my brain, a sense of deja vu, and discovered that I had posted about the same issue before. So maybe I have posted consistently, at least as far as themes and ideas are concerned?

Anyway looking back I can honestly say I'm probably in the best shape of my life, in terms of fitness and overall health. Building daily routines—exercise, sleep hygiene—that I can realistically stick to has been huge. Focussing on nutrition generally and especially iron for the last year has been the biggest game changer. Wish I knew 12 years ago what I know now!

This, exactly.

Saw this on Twitter just after I posted this morning. Sums up my anxiety about everything—the feeling of not being allowed or qualified to feel good about myself. 

Happiness is the ultimate crime 

What was it Oscar Wilde said about living well being the best revenge? Maybe that will be my revenge against societal expectations—celebrating my tiny achievements extra loud, and treating myself whenever I decide I deserve it, and maybe even just allowing myself to be happy?

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

Treating yourself

I started writing a discussion forum post and then I thought, “No, this needs to go on long enough that it should go on the blog.”

Struggling to think of treats for myself. My therapist gave me daily homework, and part of it is that after doing the hard thing, I’m supposed to reward myself. But I feel like I’ve been so bombarded with “rah rah selfcare” for the last few years that I can’t think of anything that feels like a reward that is feasible and I don’t do already. And I have all of these negative voices in my head saying “never use food as a reward because disordered eating” and “treat yourself is just a marketing scam” and variations on those themes, like whatever I choose for a treat, I’m gonna get scolded for choosing the wrong thing.

I remember when I was a teen, going through puberty with my fat dad making snide comments about me putting on weight, and figuring food treats could be a reward for exercise so it would all even out, and then my sister making snide comments about eating disorders. Could never win with those two! There was always a gotcha lurking around the corner, no matter what I did.  

I can’t believe I’m still carrying that baggage all these years later.

Intellectually I know I really need to say to hell with both of them. They were both more concerned with scoring weird ego points than anything to do with my wellbeing. But it’s hard to forget decades of conditioning. 

Maybe I start by reclaiming my treats.

Maybe I start by saying, I like good food and if I want that to be my treat, it’s fine, despite what the self-appointed diet (or anti-diet) experts say. 

And now I can’t stop remembering all of the people over the years who have chided me about diet/exercise despite having demonstrably worse health than I do. Why do I give their opinions any weight at all?

Part of my longstanding tradition of assuming everyone who disagrees with me is right, I guess. No matter how many times that proves not to be the case, it’s still my automatic reflex. 

Maybe that’s what I should be working on more than anything else. 

Noticing more things

A couple of other things that have changed for me in the past couple of weeks:

1. School started for the kid
2. Fall arrived and it is cold and dark (just realized it was Equinox last week!)

So, I am all alone, all day every day, and it’s suddenly not shocking why I haven’t been able to drag myself out of bed for a morning run.

Another thing I realized—I told myself I should start doing morning tap dance practice if it’s too cold and wet to run (very rainy lately) and it suddenly hit me why I struggle with practising—one of the things I enjoy about my tap lessons is that I am doing it with a group of people. I enjoy anything more if I do it with a group of people. Tapping alone in my room just isn’t the same. 

Especially now that I am alone all day at home. The dreaded Zoom meetings do not count as human interaction. They’re inhumane interaction. I have more next week too, and the week after. Ugh.

Noticing things

The good thing about tracking—the very point of tracking—is noticing what makes a difference. Seeing patterns, and ideally making changes.

This past week was not great. It was a struggle to get up, a struggle to do self-care, a struggle to eat right, and there were a couple of midnight snack attacks.

Looking back, there were two obvious contributing factors:

1. Getting my period
2. Too much Zoom

Neither of these are good for my mood or overall health.

Aside from cramps, hormones, and being anxious about accidents, my period usually comes with intestinal upsets which make me less likely to eat right or exercise. Not good.

On top of that, this week I had not one but two lunchtime Zooms—lunch normally being a chance to get outside for a walk, a boon to both mental and physical health—and a three-hour Zoom training on the weekend (which ran long). I feel so depleted after a Zoom. I need to look away, move, cram food in my face, or have a nap as soon as I’m done. Especially long ones. The 90-minute lunch-ruiners were bad enough, but 3 hours on Saturday was just brutal. Also meant I missed out on some fun once-a-year type things I had been looking forward to. Blarg.

If nothing else, it’s a great reminder that as soon as this year is done, I need to get back to the job search, and find a position where I can go to work instead of being stuck at home all the time.

In other news, I just started heme iron supplements. Kind of annoyed that I didn’t read the label more carefully—they only have 11g of elemental iron, and you’re supposed to take 3 a day! I thought I bought a 2-month supply, but instead it’s only about 3 weeks. Well it’s an experiment anyway; we’ll see if it makes a difference.

Slow Jogging

I heard about this only recently, and decided to check out the book from the library:

Slow Jogging by Hiroaki Tanaka

Slow Jogging by Hiroaki Tanaka is “an efficient, healthier, and pain-free approach to running for all ages and lifestyles.” Sounds good to me, as someone who takes up running for a bit, and then dumps it again. Basically, it’s the opposite of “no pain, no gain.” Tanaki dreamed of being an Olympic-level runner, but struggled with training and eventually was told (wrongly) that he had been born with a heart condition that meant he couldn’t train at that level. He went on to research exercise, but didn’t really put his theories into practice. After taking more than 4 unhappy hours to finish a marathon in his 30s, he gave up exercise until he turned 45, when he was diagnosed with fatty liver and high cholesterol, due to weight gain and years of being sedentary.

His practice is based on running at “niko niko” pace, from the Japanese word for smile—meaning a pace that allows you to talk to companions, sing a song, generally enjoy what you’re doing. Sounds good to me!

It’s also similar to some of the advice from the other book I’m reading, Exercise for Mood and Anxiety. I put some of that into practice this morning, reminding myself that I feel better after a run, and walking for part of my 5k this morning. I ran 2 km, walked roughly .5 km, ran 1.5, walked .5, and ran the final .5—a strong finish/ending on a high note being a good way to cement the memory of the run as enjoyable rather than a drag!—and ended up doing some of my fastest splits ever. One km was under 6 minutes, which is super fast for me, even if it’s slow for everyone else!