Fitness Fellowship 2023: Week 38 Check-in

[sylvanwitch]

Hey, Friends!

I hope your week has been a good one, fitness-wise and in all the ways that matter to you. As always, please share what you feel like sharing about your fitness journey or anything else.



As of yesterday morning's weigh-in, I'd lost about 2 pounds. This morning, I was up a little because of splurging yesterday, but I'm not worried. The intermittent fasting and exercise regimen are doing what they're supposed to. Yay!

Sleep has been okay--somewhat disrupted by weird anxiety dreams (ugh). Hydration has been spotty because I've been very busy at work and the bathroom is a long way from my room, which means I'm drinking less than I should be. I have to be better about that. I didn't meditate or practice mindful breathing this week. I did exercise every day, and I did eat only within my given window and mostly healthily too.

For the week ahead, I have to try to be better hydrated and try to get more sleep. I have later nights at school and/or other obligations every night this week, which I hate. I like to come home and be done for the day, have some time to relax and read, go for a walk, etc. Alas, the week ahead (and the weekend following it) are going to be packed. Ah, well. If I can at least maintain my eating habits and get some exercise daily, I will consider it a win.



Wishing you what you most need to have a great week!

Comments

[cornerofmadness]

walking all over the festival counts as my only exercise this week

So so

[oldtoadwoman]

I'm hanging in there. Work is stressful right now (big software change going on and every day there is a new glitch) and I'm not sleeping well. I've given in to getting a sub sandwich from the local deli several times and yesterday I got ice cream.

Today I was fantasizing about ordering takeout but i kind of have a deal with myself that if I'm going to eat junk food, I at least have to go and get it myself because that puts an upper limit on how much weight I can gain if I have to walk for it.

I'm still a little bit above my January weight which is frustrating. I started the year needing to lose quite a lot and now I'll be lucky if the year is a draw.

[oschun]

Anxiety dreams are the worst. I had the same thing at the end of last week. My mind was full of resentful, festering thoughts that were causing me sleepless nights. Even the Piriton wasn't keeping me asleep. There was a thing that happened with my new head of dept and I was struggling to process it and figure out how to deal with it. Eventually I just had it out with her really openly on Friday. It went well and everything is resolved now. She's actually lovely and the two of us are going to work well together. She even bought me a bottle of wine today - which I am going to resist drinking. The whole thing derailed me in the latter half of the week but I did make it to pilates on Tues and managed a full fasting day on the Mon.

A small group of teachers have organised a fitness group after school on a Fri to do a cardio video together in the only air-conditioned classroom that also has a big-screen TV. I have committed to joining. So that's my plan this week. Two days of a 17hr fasting window, pilates, cardio on Fri, no wine in the week. In an ideal world I will finally make it to the gym to do a weights session, but I'm also happy to just try and do better each week and gradually add things rather than trying to hit every single goal.

Good luck with your busy week.

[luzula]

Ugh, sorry about the too-busy week ahead, that sounds tough! Sounds like you've been doing what you can though. <3

Last week's goals:
- No work emails after nine, no computer after ten, and turn out the light at eleven.
This was fine, except that I occasionally stretch the reading time until 11.15 or so. Heh.
- Go hiking two days on the weekend (I'm taking every chance before the evenings get too dark).
Yessss, the hiking was great! (The train delays on the way home were not.)
- Go running twice.
Only once, but that was because a new workout I tried did weird things with my calves, and I wanted to give them a rest. Not doing that workout again.
- Work out on four days, and do workouts other than my usual one.
Yesss, I managed this.

This week's goals:
- No work emails after nine, no computer after ten, and turn out the light at eleven.
- Go running once, and work out twice. (Low goals here, because I'm going away over the weekend, and also travelling one other day, and one day is just packed full of other stuff. It MIGHT be that I can work out where I'm going on the weekend; we'll see.)

[sylvanwitch]

That sounds like a LOT of walking in a day! I take it getting to the gym has just been Not Possible w/ all the tech chaos. I hope things do get better for you soon!

Re: So so

[sylvanwitch]

Ugh, computers--why??? Lol! I feel your pain. We in education have to stand in solidarity in this regard b/c gods know it's always one new thing or another.

I'm glad you avoided the temptation of takeout, but I'm sorry you're feeling so frustrated. I, too, started the year about where I am now, so I definitely relate to feeling like it's a lost cause. That said, I do feel more centered on my goals now than I have in a long time, and I think now that I'm in a routine, I'll be okay. Is there a way you can establish a routine (or elements of a routine, if your schedule varies) to help you stay the course?

[sylvanwitch]

I'm glad you were able to work it out with your dept. head. That sort of social/work interface is often the source of my worst anxiety, and I am super glad you were able to just go at it head-on and get it resolved, so it didn't fester and create greater anxiety.

Also, YAY for cardio video time with colleagues! That sounds awesome! I'm so glad you all are doing that for yourselves and each other; that kind of fitness-social bonding is so important and, I think, often overlooked.

I think your overall approach of introducing new elements to your routine gradually makes a great deal of sense. I sometimes get too much on my plate, goals-wise, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of doooooom.

GOOD LUCK with all your goals, and thank you for the luck for the week ahead. I am just trying to get through the gauntlet of September/October.

[sylvanwitch]

Once again, I just really admire the flexibility of matching your goals to reality and being always very straightforward with yourself about things. You are awesome! I wish you luck with your busyness this week and hope it's not stressful for you!

[aien_hime]

Hi! I’m doing good! I met up with a dietitian to tweak my diet a bit and I’m slowly but steadily losing the pregnancy weight. I can now fit into most of my pre-latest pregnancy clothes! Woohoo! I want to shed the extra weight from pregnancy 1 and 2 too, but I’m already glad I made it to this milestone.

[sylvanwitch]

CONGRATULATIONS! That's a fantastic milestone, and I'm SO happy for you! YAY! :-)

Re: So so

[oldtoadwoman]

I tried to reply to this earlier and then Dreamwidth gave me a computer error, which seems so fitting to this conversation.

What I was going to say was to whine about how bad things have been going at work and today was even worse. (This program is so glitchy and I'm so tired and whiney.)

Re: So so

[sylvanwitch]

I hate when the higher-ups decide unilaterally to change things without asking the people who actually work daily with the technology. "Oh, this is intuitive," or "Oh, this will be easier." Intuitive and easier for whom, exactly?

I mean, sometimes the changes are necessary, I get that. But here, anyway, the tech lords change things and then act all surprised and astonished that it causes a cascade effect of problems they never considered because they don't attach the technology to end user experience, which is, to my mind, a big fat oversight. Lol!

Anyway, I definitely feel your pain on this one!

[cornerofmadness]

thanks it was. I can't even clean my house or even properly cook because I've been so busy with all these online issues

Re: So so

[oldtoadwoman]

They had good reason for switching platforms because the old one sucked and the new one has a lot of cool new features ... and when they first started beta testing this last spring (and I signed up to assist with the beta testing) that seemed like plenty of time to hit this deadline. But, every single week, there's some new major glitch that "should be fixed in the release this week". And now we're finally for real on the new platform with children trying to use it and ... it's so bad. It would be rough enough just due to the learning curve of a new system (I spent twenty minutes just getting a student logged in today because a fifth grader didn't understand what "your password must contain at least one special character" means.) Students and instructors were being disconnected at random. (I discovered that if you type a parenthesis into the search bar, you get a weird error message and get kicked out and have to log back in again.)

And there's this pretty consistent glitch that when you're working with one student, the system will register changes on a different student's worksheet (marking the wrong things complete, changing to the wrong page, etc). There's an awkward workaround where you can open up the material through the admin site and just open it up in a separate tab, but that means having a ton of tabs open which gets confusing after awhile.

I was also getting chat notifications when another instructor and student were communicating, which had nothing to do with me, but kept beeping every time they messaged each other for like an hour. (I have a theory that because that instructor and I were talking earlier we somehow failed to "disconnect" at the end of our meeting.) I've now had at least three students fail to fully connect when they log in so they can't hear or see me (it's a quirk that has something to do with the camera permissions when they logged in) so we have to communicate by typing on the screen. Imagine trying to teach math and the only way you can explain how to solve an absolute value inequality is by typing words on the screen. It's just exhausting.

My day ended with me eating chocolate sauce out of a jar with a spoon.

Re: So so

[sylvanwitch]

UGH! That all sounds SO stressful! I don't understand how it's just sort of the accepted industry "standard" that the product a software company produces is not going to work properly for the first several days or weeks. How is that quality control? Why aren't there better standards? It's so unfair that it falls on you and your co-workers to "work out the bugs" on this stuff, especially as it interferes not only with your jobs but also and especially the kids who are trying to learn. That's just hugely frustrating and definitely warrants chocolate directly from the jar.

Re: So so

[oldtoadwoman]

New theory on the chat notification issue (because it happened again). Different student and instructor. I think the system ties the chat to the student and anyone who talks to them and I don't see a way to leave a chat. So... student sends me a message "sorry my mic doesnt work" and because of that one message, I now get message alerts for that student and his instructor every time they type to each other for the next hour. (Guess how often they typed messages to each other given that his mic didn't work.)

I've sorted out the marking the wrong board thing (it's still easy to do, but they showed me how to force a board to be the active one).

They fixed the polygon tool that was broken, so tiny improvements every day. Still lots of major issues to resolve but I'm less panicked.

I'm cat sitting for a friend this weekend which is at least going to give me some time to myself out of work hours. That also means I'm about to walk to her local bakery because I don't get the chance often.

I've been re-watching episodes of Fat Doctor as motivation. There are three commonalities that always strike me with the people's stories... #1 most of them are my size or heavier after losing hundreds of pounds and they are so thrilled to have regained the mobility that I take for granted, #2 so many of them have large unhealthy meals delivered to them because they can't physically get to the store any more (my biggest fear with my roommate ordering food delivery so often), and #3 the excuses they give for why the can't lose weight are both pathetic and really familiar. I should object to shows like that due to the fat-shaming aspect, but it's my way of reminding myself why I can't just have food delivered anytime I have a craving. (I also appreciate that the series doesn't shy away from the cases that go badly. For instance, the man who died from surgical complications or the woman who became an alcoholic after her gastric surgery because she just substituted one addiction for another.) ...anyway, my point was I kind of have a deal with myself that as long as I'm walking to the bakery to get my treats, that feels like a "normal" level of indulgence.

I threw away the last half jar of chocolate sauce. It was only in the kitchen because my roommate wanted hot fudge sauce for her ice cream, but the corner store only had chocolate sauce which she rejected as inferior. So it was just me not "letting it go to waste" which is another bad habit I have (roommate is a much pickier eater than I am, but I was raised to never waste food so...)

Oh, the vegan store is reopening soon allegedly. They were supposed to reopen Labor Day but it got pushed back so I'm still not holding my breath, but there are help wanted signs in the window and a new "opening weekend" date listed.