July was like June in reverse. Instead of being up 2.6 pounds, I was down 2.6 pounds. My body fat also dropped by half a percent and actual fat itself by half a pound. I am up three pounds on the year, but that’s down from a peak of nearly six pounds.
I am still fat.
But all signs are trending in a positive direction now and I’ve made real progress on curbing ye olde snacking, so I am reasonably confident the weight loss will continue.
I’m not going to aim for anything crazy like dropping below 170 by the end of August, but at least such a goal is no longer implausible.
Stats:
July 1: 177.4 pounds July 31: 174.8 pounds (down 2.6 pounds)
Year to date: From 171.8 to 174.8 pounds (up 3 pounds)
And the body fat:
July 1: 23.4% (41.5 pounds of fat) July 31: 23.1% (40.5 pounds of fat) down 0.5 pounds)
It’s been four days since Tuesday’s heel tragedy. The good news is I can still walk and perhaps even walk and chew gum at the same time.
The bad news is my heel is still sore. Is it as sore? No. But it’s still sore, and it peeves me and continues to mystify me. But I went for a walk with Nic through Mundy Park today to take a bird picture (yes, we only saw a single bird. Well, actually, only one specifically in a tree. There was also a duck in the water.) and while my heel was starting to feel a little more sore toward the end, I got through the excursion without limping, curling up in a ball or demanding that Nic carry me out, and it is no worse for the trip out now, later in the evening and having been off it for awhile.
I was originally thinking I could run maybe as soon as this Monday (two days hence) but now it seem the end of next week is probably more realistic. Oh well.
Stay tuned as I suspect there are more heel updates to come. Woo.
When I went to bed last night I was sad because my left heel was still pretty sore from whatever mysterious thing happened to make it sore. I mean, I walked 19 km in just under three hours, but the right heel didn’t seem to mind, and I can’t recall the last time either heel objected to a walk so forcefully.
I regret to inform the six bots scraping this site that my left heel is still sore.
However, it is definitely improved over last night, so I am cautiously optimistic that I will not spend the bulk of my vacation hobbling around like an old war vet or a young protester after interaction with those supposedly there to protect and serve.
That said, I only walked to the store to get a few needed items, then another four blocks to meet my exercise goal for the day. The urge to walk more was approximately nil, which makes me sad, because I walk all over the place.
Tomorrow: Probably another update, hopefully the last.
As for vacation, the heel preoccupied my mind and body, so other than the store, I did a whole lot of nothing. I feel mildly guilty about this, so here’s a haiku about my vacation to make me feel like I did something:
Vacation
Take it to relax
But oh yeah the pandemic
Afraid to go out
Hmm, that wasn’t especially cheerful, was it? Or not cheerful at all. Maybe tomorrow, with the heel back to somewhat normalish, I will be more inspired to think in positive terms.
When I went grocery shopping today I noticed the 2 meter lines placed on the floor to remind customers to keep apart were looking rather worn and faded, which makes sense considering they’ve been walked on for close to four months.
Which then made me think that we have been living with the immediate effects of lockdown/quarantine/pandemic for about four months now and no real end in sight.
How will we adjust as this continues on? While some places have opened up early (with predictably disastrous results), only to close again, and large events like concerts being pretty much off-limits (unless you’re a certain flavor of idiot country musician) until–or if–there is a vaccine, it feels like more people are adopting a “just let it happen and get it over with” attitude.
Why people would feel this way is easy to understand–they are tired of having their lives upended by all the changes the virus has forced on them. They don’t like physical distancing or wearing masks or having to do take-out instead of eating at their favorite restaurant (though they can do the latter now in many places–time will tell how prudent eating out is).
What remains to be seen is where we go from here. Some people are engaging in a weird sort of anti-coping by doomscrolling. Others are decrying their “freedom” being curtailed and doing whatever the hell they want, safety be damned. Most are just plodding along, tired, but still understanding the necessity of following guidelines and the measures in place. B.C. has had it much easier than some places and things still seem to be under control here, so complacency is also taking root among come crowds. How careful do we need to be when it really doesn’t seem that bad? Why would the government allow things to open back up if it wasn’t safe?
Who can say what the future might bring, though? Recently I’ve been reading about some of the less-reported effects people have endured after contracting COVID-19 and the list of ailments is scary as all get-out. There is evidence emerging that some may suffer permanent organ damage, such as to their lungs. The virus is less than a year old and we know very little about it. The fact that it is infectious enough to shut down the world is frightening all on its own. It’s not the flu. It may turn out to be so much worse.
While the pandemic has in some ways become so much background noise, I wonder just how many people have thought about how long it will be before we return to “normal”–or if we ever truly will.
2020 has been a year of change and upheaval. And it’s only half over.
As you can see from the title, I am up a not-insignificant 2.6 pounds for the month of June. But there is an asterisk on this weight gain, you just can’t see it.
On June 1, I had a sudden and unexplained weight drop, going from 177 pounds on May 31 to 175.1 on June 1, a drop of 1.9 pounds. I was only 175 pounds one other day in June and that was June 2. If you exclude these anomalous days…well, I still gained weight, but a less drastic 0.7 pounds.
Still not good.
I am making more changes for July. I swear! This time I have added pressure after my virtual doctor visit.
With that said, I remained donut-free for the month once again. Here are the stats:
June 1: 175.1 pounds June 30: 177.7 pounds (up 2.6 pounds)
Year to date: From 171.8 to 177.7 pounds (up 5.9 pounds)
And the body fat:
June 1: 23.7% (41.5 pounds of fat) June 30: 23.4% (41.5 pounds of fat) (no change)
I had a virtual appointment with my doctor today (yay, global pandemic, but on the other hand, yay not having to travel to the office) and he confirmed that a lot of people are feeling extra stress right now due to the various effects of the pandemic.
No surprise there. I am one of those people and have been experiencing a lot more stress over the last few months. My doctor advised me that to stay stress-free and healthy, that it was important to keep the following five “tanks” full or as close to full as possible:
Exercise (4)
Diet regime (5)
Sleep hygiene (6)
Social relationships (6)
Hobbies (3)
I have offered a number beside each tank to indicate how full they are, with 0 being empty and 10 being full to overflowing.
As you can see, there are no 10s. I’m averaging what would be the grade equivalent of a C or D. This is not optimal. It is bad.
My doctor suggested focusing on a few to start, setting goals for improving each, and making the goals at least 70% achievable. This means starting out with something I think I can reasonably complete, and if I can’t, I simply scale back until I can. Easy peasy-ish.
Since I’ve all but stopped running, I’m going to start there and try sticking to my previous goal of 30 minutes of exercise per day while also insuring that three of those days are runs outside (or on the treadmill if it’s snowing/raining molten rock).
The next I’m going to improve is the one I’m doing right now–writing! But more of a fictional variety. I also have a few drawing ideas I want to pursue and now is a good time to set modest goals to pursue them.
We’ll see how it goes. I have a lot of room for improvement, but I have challenged myself to complete seemingly impossible tasks in the past and succeeded.
Next post: Discussing the other three tanks and my success or lack thereof in keeping them full.
My personal and to a lesser extent professional life is in what might call a state of turmoil right now, so I have elected to postpone the restart of the 21-day Complaint Free challenge, since I expect I’d just be constantly restarting and getting increasingly frustrated instead of making even incremental progress.
But I do plan to restart the challenge, hopefully sooner than later.
In the meantime, a re-post of the most amazing cat gif ever:
I completely forgot to do a write-up for my second day of my second attempt to go complaint-free for 21 days. This is because it rained most of the day, I stayed inside and engaged in very little interaction with other humans, greatly reducing the possible complaint window.
This is to say Day 2, the first day of summer, was a success.
Today started with an email essentially invalidating a bunch of work I had done yesterday. I was not happy. I complained.
I moved my complaint-free band to my other wrist. I complained some more and moved it back to the original wrist.
Tomorrow I start over on Day 1 again. I regret complaining, but at the same time part of me is glad to have gotten it out of my system this early on. It made me reflect not just on my state of mind, but where I am right now, and helped clarify the path I want to take going forward (which is not the path I am currently on).
The only thing of note today is I deliberately had to refrain from expanding on certain thoughts to others, because those thoughts would be complaints. I mulled the idea of de-complaining the thoughts by proposing solutions or whatnot, but it seemed too much effort for no real gain, so I just stilled my fingers on the keyboard.
I edged perilously close to complaining at a few points today, but again was saved by being forced to communicate through online chat and was able to resist the temptation.
My partner had a bad day at work, but upon coming home immediately set out for 30 minutes of balancing to re-establish his Zen. I appreciated him not using me as a sounding board for a litany of complaints. He felt better by not dumping on me about things I have no control over, and I felt better for not having been dumped on–and tempted to do the same in return. Win-win, as they say.
I admit, it feels like cheating to be doing the Complaint Free challenge when I’m working from home. It’s much easier to keep from complaining when you have to type out your complaint in a chat program and then hit the Enter key to send it vs. just opening your mouth and letting it spew out without thought.
Today that did not happen, so I am two for two so far on the challenge. I’ll admit there were a few times I came close, but I recognized each one and held my virtual tongue.
