Fitness Fellowship 2024: Week 28 Check-in

[sylvanwitch]

Welcome on this rainy-rainy Monday! I hope you've had a drier one than we've had here.

As usual, please do share how your fitness journey has gone over the past week and any goals, long- or short-term, you'd like to share too.



Weight: I'm down 1.4 pounds from last week. YAY!

Exercise: I am super excited to report that I have FINALLY (after years and years) developed a YOGA habit! I subscribed to Yoga-Go, a yoga-centric fitness app, on Tuesday of last week and have been doing at least 10 minutes of yoga each day. It is strenuous, sometimes sweaty, always challenging, and it makes me feel awesome! I have also made sure I've exercised a total of at least one hour every day (yoga and strength-training included), did some cardio, and a little incline work as well.

Eating plan: I've been pretty good about not snacking at night. I've had only TWO slips this week; the rest of the nights, I've managed to stay within my window and avoid snacking. I've had a couple of later-than-usual dinnertimes, too, but I just moved the next day's fast-breaking time back to keep the same spread.

Meditation/breathing: See above, re: Yoga.

Hydration: Yes. This has been important for longer rambles in the heat.

Sleep: I WISH! Ugh. So, I've been pretty good about getting to bed by 2:00am every day, but falling asleep, even when I've been off-screens for at least a half-hour before bedtime, has been difficult, even with a half-dose of melatonin. (I try to avoid the full dose because unless I get eight solid, quality hours of sleep, it leaves me a little logy the next day.) Anyway, I'll keep trying.

The week ahead: Yoga every day, walking every day, some cardio, weights at least twice (or more), gardening when/where possible. (This past week, it was either too hot or too wet--or both!--to garden.)



Good week vibes coming your way, friends!

Comments

way up

[oldtoadwoman]

I'm way up today, but I'm hoping I can smooth things out by the end of the week.

I was cat-sitting for a friend which meant several days without a weigh-in. And the night before my friend left town, we got Thai food takeout and then I ate all the leftovers the next day, and then I had one of those days where it seemed like a good idea to eat all the candy in the universe, and then the day my friend returned, we went out to another restaurant. And later last night it was so hot and muggy out, that I was just like, "I need ice cream!" like it was an actual requirement. Then I got on the scales this morning, knowing it would be bad, but ... seven pounds. I gained seven pounds since just Thursday. Hopefully some of that is just the bloat of back to back big meals and tomorrow it won't be quite as terrible. But this really underscores that I need to weigh in every single day. Otherwise my brain gets convinced that candy and ice cream have no consequences.

EDIT: As of Tuesday morning, I'm "only" up five pounds since last week.

Re: way up

[sylvanwitch]

It is SO depressing that we can gain SO MUCH in so few days and that it takes SO LONG to lose those pounds. I SO relate to your feelings here. I'm wishing you good luck in losing what you gained and in finding a good balance between enjoying treats and over-eating. I have the same struggles, as you know, and no easy answers. Just *hugs*.

Re: way up

[oldtoadwoman]

I just read an interview with Richard Simmons that he did only days before he died and he was talking about a new musical autobiography that he was writing. He wrote all the song lyrics and a professional song writer wrote the music and he was all excited about the stage show. It sounds terrible and I really hope someone makes it happen, because it sounds terrible in a delightful way. (If anyone puts this into production, I hope they understand that they cannot hold back on the sequins. If this isn't the tackiest, most over-the-top thing ever, they haven't done it right.)

Re: way up

[sylvanwitch]

I can remember watching Richard Simmons on various afternoon talk shows my mom watched. I think I even did one of his videos for a while back in the eighties? Certainly, I remember his vivid costume choices. There wasn't another personality like his in the world.

[luzula]

Yay yoga! So glad it's making you feel good. : )

I managed my primary health goal of last week, which was not to catch my friend's fever/sore throat. Now I'm doing a week-long camp where we do botanical surveys, so I'm getting lots of walking exercise. Perhaps too much, as I took a wrong step down some stairs on a train on Sunday and got a sort of minor sprain which is giving me some trouble. : ( I hope it improves. Also I aim to do the PT for my shoulder consistently, and go to bed on time as we start at 8 in the morning.

[sylvanwitch]

Yay for your annual forest survey! I know how much you enjoy the experience! I hope your sprain heals quickly, so you don’t have to pay it any mind and are able to walk without any pain. Good luck with your PT and with getting to sleep on time too. Enjoy! :-)

[delphi]

Congratulations on the yoga habit! That's fantastic. I might keep an eye out to see if I can find any fitness apps that might work for me.

In the meantime, I'm still getting back on board with my goals, but I have at least been able to get to bed earlier now that there's more than eight hours of darkness a night. That's had a good knock-on effect of letting me wake up early enough to take a walk first thing in the morning, which then gets me hungry for breakfast, and so on. It hasn't been a great agricultural season here, but I've at least been enjoying some great blackberries all week, and I'm making toasted tomato sandwiches for dinner.

[sylvanwitch]

Thank you! So far, so good. And I am already definitely feeling some positive effects of the stretching and strengthening. :-)

YAY for more sleep! (Seriously, I miss my youth when sleep wasn't so much A Thing, you know? I don't want to go back to being that young person again, but I'd love to be able to either get by on five hours a night or fall asleep right away. *sighs*) MMmmmmm, blackberries! And TOMATOES! (My patio tomato is already producing and it is EVERYthing! *grins*) Yay for morning walks that wake up the appetite and delicious produce to sate it. I do hope some of the later seasonal produce is more abundant for you.

[delphi]

Oh man, I hear you. I can't believe there was a time in my life where I'd go, "Well, at this point I'd only get four hours of sleep, so I'll feel fresher if I just stay up all night."

Youth. They don't know what's coming for them. :P

[oschun]

I'm glad you're enjoying yoga. It's great to change up your exercise routine and try something different. Yoga can be so strenuous.

I've missed pilates two weeks running and feel pretty grumpy about it. I had covid last week. There's been a minor surge over here. A number of people at school have been sick, some worse than others. It doesn't have the teeth that it used to have but I was actually quite sick, had three days off, lost my sense of smell and had brain fog for days afterwards.

We've finally ended the academic year! We did it by taking 160 twelve-year-olds to London on an overnight trip. Jeeeeez. We walked that number of kids from Trafalgar Square through a pro-Palestine demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament down to the Thames. How we didn't lose half of them I don't know.

[sylvanwitch]

WOW! You deserve ALL the props for bringing home the same number of kids you took on the trip. (Bonus points if you brought home all the SAME kids in that number! Lol!) Seriously, that's the stuff of nightmares for me. Long gone are the days of Speech and Debate trips for me, but even when I had only a small number of kids to take and bring back (and with T. and my co-coach also supervising), I was still a nervous wreck for a lot of the time! So, GO YOU!

Also, I am SO sorry to hear that you've been sick. I hope the worst is past and the brain fog has gone too.

Finally: CONGRATULATIONS! on making it to summer break! Wooooo-hoooooo! *\o/*