Stopped running again

Argh, these last two weeks. Covid booster misery. Out of town (lots of other activity though! Hiking, swimming, high ropes...). Dental surgery. I am just exhausted.

Soon though, soon... 

Started running again

Needed some motivation to get moving, so I signed up for a 10k in May to raise money for cancer, in mum’s memory. 

So far the idea has been to run three days a week—Sunday, Tuesday, Friday—but I’ve not managed Friday yet. Once was evil cold (-23°c), and once... I’ll be honest, I was tired. But I had been out two nights in a row during the week (highly unusual for me), rode my bike both times, and had an hour of tap the night before. And I’m still at my goal weight, meeting all the other markers for general health, so it’s fine, I tell you, fine!

Not this again

Well it’s my own fault for ignoring my teeth for so long, but here we are.

I have an issue with an old root canal which led to an abscess. Specialist opinion needed.

And remember my braces? From 2010 when I started this blog? Well, I had a retainer wire this whole time, and it’s come loose. Which means it jabs me, and I have to try to bend it back out of the way to keep from slicing my own tongue to ribbons. And I have to be careful how I eat. Today I had soup for lunch with kale, and the kale got caught on the wire and pulled it out of place. Augh! The woe is never ending...

App review: Cronometer

Well in my last post a month ago, I reported on the untimely (or perhaps very timely) demise of my fitness tracker, Fitday. One person suggested I try Cronometer, so I installed it. Here are my thoughts so far:

I like that it has a website as well as an app. And it’s free (with the usual “upgrade now for more features” stuff). 

I like that it synchs with Strava, so I don’t have to reinput that info (or more likely, forget to reinput that info).

It has a seemingly enormous database of foods, which is actually more annoying than helpful. It’s aimed at people—specifically Americans and maybe Brits—who eat a lot of prepared and processed mass-produced foods. For those of us who cook from scratch, or shop locally for foods cooked from scratch, it can be tricky to sift through the mountain of brand names you don’t recognize. There aren’t a lot of generics. And as usual whole foods and “ingredient” foods are missing. Does the panettone artiginale I get from a local baker have the same nutrients and calories as the many grocery store versions? It tastes a million times better, so I’m guessing no.

It does have a “create a recipe” option I like, although you still run into the issue of being unable to find the right ingredients.

There are some glitches. For example, even though I entered a weight goal, and it shows up properly on the app, on the website it shows my goal as 0 lbs. That’s zero. Fitday allowed you to enter not just a goal, but a date to achieve it by, and if you entered something unrealistic/unhealthy, you’d get a warning message. Cronometer assigns a goal date based on your weight/other stats, doesn’t allow you to adjust it (that I can see) based on needs or preferences (maybe I’d want to get there more slowly, to make each day a little easier and daily goals more achievable!) and doesn’t warn the user that zero is an unhealth goal (which clearly it is, for anyone!).

So, it has its ups and downs, but so far is good enough. Maybe I’ll figure out some tricks or shortcuts to make it work better for me. We’ll see!

Damnit

My fitness tracker website died!

For years—decades almost—I used fitday.com to track my diet, excercise, body measurements, periods, moods, you name it. It was kinda rickety and some of the functionality broke over time, but it still worked well enough for my purposes and more importantly it had years worth of my data! 

I suppose I should have seen this coming but it would have been nice if we had been given any kind of warning. Grr.

So now... any suggestions for good trackers? Free, track nutrition and exercise at a minimum?

Sigh...

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.

November reset

I hit my goal weight on my goal day! Yay me! And then Hallowe’en happened, with its stress over costume-making, lack of sleep, and abundance of candy. So I’m in reset mode, to get my healthy habits back on track (especially sleep!). Thank goodness as well for the end of daylight savings, so mornings aren’t quite as grim as they were.

So far, so good. After a week, I’m back to where I was. Biggest thing I think has been tap. My instructor suggested using a metronome instead of music—to be able to fine-tune the tempo—and it also allows me to focus more on the rhythm without getting distracted by the melody. I have been practising so much more, feel like I might be making progress (at least I know what mistakes I am making and why, now), and I definitely feel the difference in my lower body—both in how the muscles feel, and how my clothes fit. It really does not take much to make a difference, and it is so much fun!