Fitness Fellowship 2025: Check-in 39

[sylvanwitch]

We've made it another week, my friends, and I'm hoping it's been a good one for you.

Please feel free to share as much or as little of your fitness journey as you'd like. You know we're not the judging sort around these parts. :-)



Weight: 207.6, down another pound from last week. I've lost 4.8 pounds in September.

Exercise: I did yoga four of four times pledged, strength-training three of three times pledged, and walked every day. Sunday was another heavy yardwork day, too.

Eating plan: I've been good. Even when I have a meal that's not entirely healthy, I'm careful about how much I eat and when I eat it. Mostly, though, I'm rocking the veggies. I roasted broccoli, two kinds of potatoes, and butternut squash yesterday and then sauteed onions and bell peppers in one pan and mushrooms in another. I have lots of healthy choices for meals this week! :-)

Meditation: Yes! Twice or three times, I believe.

Hydration: Yes! So much water.

Sleep: This is one area I've been less-than-good about. I've been staying up a little later to read, and that's definitely having an affect on my energy levels. I *cannot* let this become a habit, or I'll be too tired to function properly.

The week head: Get to bed on time! Otherwise, keep on with what I've been doing.



May the week ahead be a good one, giving you what you most need to be happy and healthy!

Comments

[sylvanwitch]

My apologies for the very delayed response. This week has been hellish, and I am super stoked that it's Saturday.

Your soup sounds delicious, and I love the idea of making and bringing your own. I have a plug-in hotpot that I use at school. I take the cold soup in it and then it's hot by lunchtime. But, I usually use an organic, all-natural brand of canned soup, which is both more expensive and fuller of sodium than what you make at home, I'm sure. I have tried my hand at soups a couple of times and seem to be unable to season them enough that they taste like anything other than mildly salted dishwater. *sighs* I envy your Soup Fu. :-)

I used the words "relentlessly exhausting" only yesterday to a fellow veteran teacher who noted that those were the perfect words for how he was feeling, too. It feels very much like we just get more and more piled on and less and less time in which to do it all. I'm not sure how we're expected to just carry on. For me, I have a very strict no-work-at-home rule, but this past week that's meant staying late every day to catch up on grading because my "prep" periods are consumed by all sorts of other responsibilities.

Sorry, I just made that all about me. I guess I intended to say that I absolutely relate and agree with how you're feeling. (I know some of our newest teachers spent more than one prep period crying in their department head's classroom last year, and at least one of those folks didn't come back this year.)

Big, big *HUGS* to you, and I do hope things get better for us both.

[oschun]

I know exactly what you mean about soup. Salty dishwater is right. Or brown sludge when it's a bean soup.

What I've found is that it's worth slow cooking a base of finely diced veg (onions, celery, carrots, sweet peppers, garlic etc.) in olive oil for at least 30mins before adding stock and other things. Or roasting the vegetables first in olive oil and herbs and then blending them. For depth of flavour, things like miso paste, marmite, mushroom paste, vegan Worcestershire sauce etc add an umami character profile. It's about layering I think.

[sylvanwitch]

Thank you for the great tips for making more flavorful soup. I will definitely give it another go if it ever gets out of summer temperatures here. (We are having very unseasonable heat and my county is under a "burn ban" because it's been dry for so long too. Very bad. Very, very bad. *sighs*)