Fitness Fellowship 2022: Week 3 Check-in

[sylvanwitch]

We still have snow here, which means I could be snowshoeing, except it is frigid out there, so I'll have to hope for somewhat warmer temperatures. Also, I have handwritten midterm exam essays to grade, which is keeping me indoors as well. But all is otherwise well here, and I hope the same can be said for you.

If you're feeling it, please do let us know how your past week has been and what, if any, plans you have for the week ahead. Feel free to stop by any time, and don't ever feel obligated to comment if you're not feeling it. :-)



Weight: Ugh. Not going to talk about it. It's definitely up by quite a bit, though not as high as it was at year's start. Still, I'm disappointed in myself, but I am also trying hard to focus on those aspects of my fitness plan in which I am succeeding.

Exercise: This, I am ever faithful in and still very much enjoying. As of a few minutes ago, I've already done 15 elliptical workouts this year, and that's not the only exercise I'm getting, of course. I've had several days in which I've gone way over my steps goal, for example, and I've been good about strength training, as well. And I *feel* fit and strong, which I keep reminding myself is a better outcome than any number on a scale. So there.

Eating plan: This is where I've been struggling most. In fact, I gave myself permission to order a ton of Chinese takeout yesterday, so I'd have meals for the long weekend (Monday is my grading day) and be able to focus on grading. Grading essays takes a particular mindset for me, and sometimes it makes me really miserable, to be honest. But, so far, this time around hasn't been so bad, and as of tonight, I have only 18 left to grade of the 87 I brought home yesterday afternoon. Go, me! (I have four late exams coming in sometime next week, but that will be nothing compared to the pile I've been working my way through.) Anyway, I also gave in to food reward as motivation and had T. pick up an Abe's vegan carrot layer cake from Whole Foods, which I'm going to enjoy working my way through as well. (I mean, we're splitting it and not eating it all in one sitting, of course. Lol!) Anyway, I need to stop eating extra snacks when I don't need them, even if I do have exercise calories to burn. One thing I will say is that I've planned for the higher calorie Chinese food dinners by having healthy breakfasts and a light midday snack rather than lunch, and that has definitely helped keep things from getting out of hand.

Sleep: I am still inconsistent with this, but when I do get seven hours, I definitely feel a positive difference, so I really need to stop being a pouting baby about putting my book down and just go to bed already. ;-)

Meditation: Some? I mean, I do pray daily as part of my spiritual practice, and I do sometimes spend some time focusing on my breathing. But I would like to get back into a more regular, formal meditation practice. I keep saying it. Maybe I should actually DO it, huh?


Sending you sunshine and smiles for the week to come!

Comments

[oldtoadwoman]

I'm exactly where I was last week. I'm still hopeful that I can bring it own next week so this will look like a stop on the way to the right direction. But I'm still vaguely disappointed that I haven't gone down at all.

[sylvanwitch]

I know it's difficult to drum up motivation when there is no immediate positive outcome. I have the same problem right now. BUT, I also know we are both capable of doing this and just have to gather the shreds of our motivation for it. :-)

[cornerofmadness]

I got back to the gym this week and I plan to talk to the endocrinologist on monday about the very quick weight gain

[sylvanwitch]

I love your icon!

Good for you for going to the gym--that's a battle won! And good luck at the endocrinologist today. I hope they give you news you can work with!

[cornerofmadness]

Thanks It was a gift from talan in fandomtrees.


Me too. I saw my GP this morning. She was very concerned about that weight gain (and that my hair is coming out in clumps again) I will see the endo in a few hours.

[aien_hime]

Weight: no idea. After a great talk with my dietitian I decided to focus on eating well rather than weight loss first. So we set the scale aside for now. Not going to weigh myself until March! I’m somewhat nervous about this ahaha.

Exercise: going well. Riding our stationary bike 4-5 times a week and going for frequent walks.

Eating: this is going great! I am not restricting myself but I am eating only wholefood. If I am hungry I just take fruit. Very happy with where I am with this. This is my main goal for the next two months so I am going to keep this up!

[sylvanwitch]

YAY! Your eating plan sounds fantastic, and I'm so glad you're enjoying the healthy food choices you're making. That's awesome!

I don't blame you for eschewing the scale, especially on dietician's advice, and I hope that you continue to feel fit and strong without it!

[batdina]

Go you on the elliptical!

I am finally, after months, back to PT! I'm so psyched, and so weak, but ready to get back to work. Weight wise I haven't gained any, but I haven't lost any either. I'm still on the bike every day (25 minutes, about to go to 30) and doing strength stuff for upper body.

Ordering a new gymnastics mat for abdominal exercise and other floor related things and then I start PT in earnest. I'm going to get my body back!

[sylvanwitch]

Thank you! I'm still sort of relieved that I like it as much as I do, given the very real investment. And it makes me feel kinda badass, honestly. ;-)

YAY! How awesome for you to be able to go back to doing PT! That's amazing and wonderful. I know how restless you were to be able to resume your exercise regimen, and I hope you continue to find it fulfilling in helping you regain your body at last! You deserve every good thing your efforts bring, my friend. :-)

[oschun]

Well done for balancing the takeout with lighter breakfasts and lunches. I sympathise with the difficulty of trying to manage a huge load of grading with trying to plan and cook meals. I winced reading the number of essays you had to get through. I had a mere 30 essays to mark this weekend and thought I was going to cry with despair yesterday at the quality of the writing of the first-year students. I had an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and a bottle of wine last night to soothe my despair. But marking the essays from the second-year class today made me so much happier and I did a 2 hour hike this afternoon to try and balance the mountain of sugar I had yesterday. Balance is all!

[sylvanwitch]

Thank you, my friend. That's a kindness; I really struggle with "permission" where food is concerned.

Ugh, grading, right? I mean, sometimes I enjoy what they have to say, and it's always rewarding to watch them grow and develop, but most often, it's just tedious and wince-inducing because they AREN'T reflecting anything they're supposed to have learned. *sighs*

I feel you on the need for sugar, and I'm glad you got that hike in to balance it out. I started today (my grading day, but I've finished, so I get to go play for a bit) with the last of the Chinese sugar doughnuts, which means I have a LOT of exercising to do to justify eating anything else at all. LOl!

[delphi]

Congratulations on the exercise, and good luck with the sleep! Feeling fit and strong is such a win, and I'm glad you're feeling a positive difference when you get more sleep. (Although I hear you. Going to bed is harrrrrd when there are so many hours in the day and nicer things to do lile reading.)

This was admittedly a tough week for me. I had been looking into a referral for a surgery—one I qualify for under my province's insurance and guidelines, including through my BMI—only to learn that the only surgeons in the region who perform it are only accepting new patients with a BMI under 25. The extra complication is that with the state of health care being what it is here right now, I'd likely be looking at a three to five year wait, so taking off that much weight would have to be sustainable over several years, which for me...honestly, it probably wouldn't be.

I've got some other options that I'm looking into, but it was still frustrating, and saddening, and made me feel ashamed of myself in a way that isn't productive. And then it made me kind of mad at all the social narratives rattling around in my head about how unfeasible productivity should be the optimal response to shame. Working through it, and also trying to focus on the fact that ideally I won't be living in this city in five years' time and would have had to make alternative arrangements anyhow, so I should just focus on my day to day health goals.

Which have been going well, aside from a couple of lapses on the sleep front that mostly stemmed with working on an exchange fic. I've been eating some tasty, healthy food, and I've been on my stationary bike five times this week. My goal for this coming week is to eat dinner a little earlier and see if that has a positive effect on my sleep. I think I've been noticing that when I eat too close to going to bed, my dreams are much more vivid and my sleep more fitful.

[sylvanwitch]

UGH, I HATE BMI! I hate that it's been debunked by good, evidence-based science and yet it's still being used by the medical profession to justify their decisions about OUR bodies. It sucks and it's wrong and frustrating, and I'm so, so sorry it's made you feel ashamed because you have NOTHING to be ashamed of. You're thoughtful about your choices, you listen to your body, and you have a very healthy attitude toward both, and you don't deserve to feel belittled by an arbitrary, useless number. Big, big *HUGS* to you.

I'm glad to hear you're using the bike so often, and I hope that continues to be rewarding for you, and I wish you luck on the sleep habits front because, as we've shared here and before, that's the tough nut to crack. I hope you're able to find the balance you need in order to get better rest.

More *hugs* and lots of positive energy for you for the week ahead!

[delphi]

Thank you so much for the kind words. *hugs* I really needed to read them today.

The most frustrating thing about the BMI situation is that I was trying to get a breast reduction. If anyone should consider that some of us are carrying a full 2.5 points of BMI in their bra, which isn't likely to affect peri- or post-operative outcomes but also isn't entirely going anywhere without surgery...it would be people who perform breast reductions.

[adore]

Go you! Congrats on the exercise, and on balancing your takeaway meals with the lighter homemade food. I feel you on the difficulty of cooking when there's other big demands on your time. Sometimes I just cook oats and have fruit with them: that's not low-carb but it's quick, and works for me.

I have a work-from-home desk job that has me sitting all day, so I've been doing yoga for half an hour to stretch my spine every day of the week. I've also snatched the chance to walk in the sun whenever I got some time between calls.

[sylvanwitch]

Thank you so much! I *love* oats, though sometimes I get bored and try other hot cereal grains, but I inevitably return to the oats. Lately, I've been fixing overnight oats the night before a work day, and then I'll put it in a bowl and heat it for breakfast. That's been a filling, healthy way to start the day. And I'm trying to make sure I prep foods on Sundays that I can use in various recipes all week. (For example, I'll cook a big pan of onions, peppers, and mushrooms tomorrow and then use them in rice-and-beans, burritos, taco salads, etc. for the rest of the week.) But I do sometimes fall into that convenience food trap. *sighs*

Yoga! That sounds lovely! I ALWAYS swear I'm going to learn it and do it, and I'll try a video or whatnot and then like it but just not follow through. (I'm looking at you, meditation, for this same pattern.) I think it would be a great way to help me stay limber as I age. I should add it to my fitness goals for the year and see if I can actually do it.

[adore]

Overnight oats are lovely, and pre-prep for weekday meals is a great idea!

I went to a yoga class and that kept me accountable, but that was before Covid. Now I do it on my own. It's easier once you start, I think, because I do it as regularly as I can now and it makes me feel good.

[ysilme]

Still, I'm disappointed in myself, but I am also trying hard to focus on those aspects of my fitness plan in which I am succeeding.
***big hugs*** to you about the frustrating and disappointing parts! ♥ I believe it is among the hardest thigns on a fitness/weightloss journey to not beat yourself over the head with thigns not going to your liking, but to focus on the good parts, and celebrate the successes, no matter how small. *hugs again* And you seem to definitely have a lot of things to celebrate in this!

Exercise is currently a sore point for me. We don't really have indoor options except the training bike, which is currently annoyingly surrounded by boxes and piles of things during our upstairs furniture and bookshelf rearranging process. The weather, though, is currently also so bad most of the time that going outside is either really ghastly or even dangerous (severe storm), so I'm stuck a bit on that. But leaving the bad weather days aside I've done a few long and invigorating "walks" (walk, for me, means walking relatively fast, like Nordic Walking but without sticks, and incorporating some inclines which is not difficult as we're living in a rather hilly area).
Overall, though, I'm content with my progress since my last check-in: I'm down again one of those frustrating kilos, and am oscillating around the second one, and have seen my newest low thrice already again. ^^ I can link my weight ups and downs very closely to the amount of sleep I'm getting (not as much as I'd like ATM, but better than two weeks ago) and if I manage to go for long walks or only short ones. What I'm really struggling with currently is lowering the carbohydrates and avoiding sugar, and sweets/chocolate in particular. I'm currently writing for a gift exchange and it's not going well _at all_, usually a time when I'm allowing myself sweets or chocolate as little bits of comfort. A habit I want to shuck, but that doesn't work out well either. So far I didn't have any sweets or chocolate, but I find myself getting obsessed with food again (a frequent occurence when I'm denying myself something), and it also seems to affect my writing badly; it feels like something of a downward spiral. For the long term I need to find a solution for that, but right now I'm a bit at a loss of how to proceed from here.
At least generally, "obsession with food" doesn't result in junk eating (simply as I don't have any in the house or could get easily, and also don't crave it, I just crave carbohydrates and a strong umami taste) - but I'm eating more carbohydrates than I want, and also more meat/meat products than I want (to counter the carbohydrate crave... this is so frustrating). The carbohydrates usually are (German) whole grain rye bread (with veggie cheese), whole grain oatmeal/whole grain muesli, fruit (not a lot) or leftover tray bake potatoes as we had them a lot lately; so all in all good choices for carbohydrates. The frustrating thing is that I cook reduced carb meals but then eat them later solo because I'm not having a stated feeling, despite being full. I'm sure you know this, and it's something I find oh so hard to deal with. *sigh*
But a few good things there are to focus on, too: one of my favourite skirts, a green tweed one, which I got when I had been losing a lot of wheight before my Graves' disease was diagnosed, had ever fit again after my thyroid was back to behave normally, not even with the weight loss over the last year. I just tried it this week and not it sits rather loose! ^^
And when I had gained those two kilos after the New Year I no longer felt slim and in shape as before, but flabby again (for a lack of better description), and that is gone again, too.

[sylvanwitch]

Oh, hon, I'm sorry the weather is awful and also for your frustration with food issues because I know you have a tricky relationship with food sometimes, and I hate that you're having challenges. I hope you're able to find a way around them and that you're able to write without feeling the tension there. Big, big *HUGS* to you for that solution coming very soon!

Congratulations on getting into one of your favorite skirts once more! Isn't that a wonderful feeling? I love that for you! And I'm so glad you're feeling fit again, too. That means SO much, I know, and is marvelous to hear.

I am sending you all kinds of good energy and love and *hugs* for the week ahead. I also wish for you good sleep and a chance to get outdoors in nice weather. *HUGS* and more *HUGS*