Health

If sleep is for the weak, I am very strong

UPDATE, July 15, 2023: My score finally improved! See below.

Because my sleep has sucked the past week. But I think I know why.

This horribad flu I’ve had has mostly receded now–mostly (today is Day 16). What remains is fluid in the chest. I am still a little phlegmy. But the way it mainly manifests now is the fluid makes certain sleep positions uncomfortable, which makes my sleep poorer.

My Garmin Forerunner 255 seems to translate this as “stress” so it keeps telling me to not stress out before bed, even if I’ve done nothing more than had a hot bath and spent an hour watching kittens.

For fun, here’s how my sleep score has tracked the past week. Note that in Garmin’s rating system, they found only about 5% achieved an Excellent rating.

I can’t precisely say why my score has continued to get worse, though the Monday to Wednesday range is relatively close. Thursday was even worse still because my side of the bed got accidentally adjusted into an upright position around 4 a.m. and brought me fully awake.

Garmin sleep rankings:

90-100: Excellent
80-89: Good
60-79: Fair
0-59: Poor

My sleep scores, starting July 8th:

Saturday: 79
Sunday: 76
Monday: 69
Tuesday: 66
Wednesday: 60
Thursday: 44
(NEW) Friday: 82

Why did Friday see a dramatic reversal? I suspect two things:

  • Late night foot massage with a massage thingie
  • I ran yesterday so was physically tired, not just mentally

Day 12 of you-know-what

Yep. Let’s take inventory:

  • Energy level: Pretty much back to normal
  • Sleep: Back to normal
  • Running: Still not running, but this is more a knee thing
  • Stretching: I’ll resume today. Promise!
  • Coughing: None unless I contort my body in weird ways
  • Sneezing: Nope
  • Runny nose: A little
  • Phlegm: Let me tell you, I am probably producing that same amount of phlegm right now as a hundred people combined. Maybe a thousand. It’s gross. I am grossing myself out writing about it. But it is finally diminishing.

Really, I’m just surprised I find myself thinking, “COVID-19 wasn’t that bad.” Because it really wasn’t.

Here’s one more (tiny, adorable) kitten:

Day 10 of now-probably-not-officially-sick

I woke up fat and unrested. Is unrested a word? Apparently not. I will add it to Nedlish!

Day 10 my remaining symptoms are the same, but milder in all cases. The nose is a bit stuffy, the chest feels a bit congested (though no coughing unless I contort into a cough-friendly position) and the ears are just a touch plugged, depending on which way I turn my head.

Despite feeling better in all regards, I had an allegedly poor sleep last night and also managed to gain 1.2 pounds, like secret night gnomes were directly injecting fat into my body as I (poorly) slept.

In all, I am nonplussed.

Here are more words for Nedlish:

  • unrested
  • lanker
  • plook
  • bitbarren
  • cowtastrophe
  • wentwill

A small list of symptoms: Day 9 of Whatever this is

Mentally, I feel I am mostly recovered from this flu/hell I’ve been suffering from, and my energy level is mostly back, too. For posterity, here are the lingering symptoms I’m still feeling nine days after the plague hit me:

  • Nose is still slightly stuffed up
  • Chest is still slightly congested
  • Ears are still slightly plugged

It is all slightly annoying, which is a vast improvement over last Sunday where my brain felt like it was in some kind of hell fog, while my body felt like it was alternately on fire or being plunged into invisible ice, all coupled with the ability to only sleep uninterrupted for minutes at a time. That was fun!

Anyway, here is a glorious kitten battle:

Top 5 worst things (and 2 best things) about being sick

person in yellow protective suit
I searched for images for “sick” and this one made me laugh, so it wins. Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

As noted previously, being sick sucks. I had forgotten how much through the benefit of not being sick for a long time, but now that I am reminded, here are a few aspects of the misery I wanted to record for posterity.

5 Worst Things About Being Sick

  • Lousy sleep
  • Nose gets sore from all the sneezing/being stuffed up/runny
  • That weird sick fog feeling in your head
  • I’m too hot, no I’m too cold; repeat
  • No energy to do even simple, dumb things

Bonus!

2 Best Things About Being Sick

  • Getting out of regular obligations
  • Staying in bed as long as you like, guilt-free

Confirmed: Getting sick still sucks

apartment bed carpet chair
Semi-accurate example of how I am currently feeling. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

My history of illness changed quite dramatically with the pandemic, because the combination of no commute and working remotely meant I had so little exposure to other people, I never got sick. Observe:

  • January 2020: I and many others in Langara’s IT department were felled by one of the worst flu bugs I’ve ever had. In all the time I worked there, I’d never seen so many people get so very sick. Looking back, many of the symptoms match what people reported in the early days of COVID-19, with the loss of taste and smell, for example (which happened to me). Whether it was actually covid or not, it was definitely nasty. It was also the last time I’d have a cold or the flu for the next three and a half years!
  • April 2022: Jeff got COVID-19, and before he knew he’d been infected, it made the jump to me, so I got what felt like the equivalent of a head cold for a few days, my first illness in almost two and a half years.
  • June/July 2023: Right near the end of the month Jeff got sick again (not covid), likely a flu bug and after a few days of feeling fine, I thought I’d dodged it, but this past Wednesday evening I could feel the first tendrils of it in me, and today I am in the fourth day of being confirmed sick. It’s pretty much a head cold for me–stuffed up like crazy and a bit of a headache. Friday I felt surprisingly good, so I went birding Saturday (yesterday) and overdid it with 25,000 steps walked. I slept in a little today and have dropped a massive 1.8 pounds overnight. Being sick is always good for the waistline!

Today I am taking it easy. The weather is warm and pleasant, I kind of want to test some new settings on my camera, but in reality, I really just want to sleep, then wake up and feel normal and healthy again. So yes, I can confirm that getting sick still sucks. I will be quite happy to not have to mention this again for another few years. Or decades.

Trees, birds, and pacing myself

I’m still recovering from a head cold or maybe the flu (who can say for sure?) but thought a gentle day of birding would be fine. I mean, it was, except that I walked way more than intended–over 24,000 steps. That was perhaps too much, and toward the end I was flagging pretty hard. Some food and rest later helped, but I haven’t felt this bagged in quite a while.

We hit three spots:

  • Sunnyside Acres Urban Forest
  • Serpentine Fen
  • Crescent Beach

Overall, my shots were not great, but I may have found out partly why–more later when I have more energy to typy-type.

For now, here’s a shot looking up in Sunnyside Acres, taken on my iPhone:

June 2023 weight loss report: Down 1.1 pounds

Yes, down! I have achieved the impossible dream and actually lost weight over a 30-day period.

The weight loss started early, right on the second day of the month, and I stayed below 166.2 pounds for all but two days of the month. Ominously, one of those days was June 28, just two days ago, but I was down for the next two days to come under.

The weight loss is small at only 1.1 pounds (I have actually gained more than that overnight a few times this month), but it does signal a trend, I think, and it puts me less than a pound up on the year, so I am hopefully going to see more weight loss over the summer.

If my right knee behaves, and I can run more, even better. But I’ll continue to focus primarily on diet, because it is donuts and Ding Dongs that are the enemies of the waistline. Mmm, Ding Dongs…

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2023: 164.2 pounds 
Current: 165.1 pounds
Year to date: Up 0.9 pounds

June 1: 166.2 pounds
June 30: 165.1 pounds (down 1.1 pounds)

Body fat:

June 1: 24%
June 30: 24% (unchanged) 

Historical: January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds

May 2023 weight loss report: Up 1.5 pounds

Poop.

I was up again.

Let’s break it down into the negatives and positives again, like last month.

The negatives:

  • Up three months in a row (March, April, May). Boo.
  • The amount I’m up on the year to date has further increased, from 1.2 pounds, to 2.5 pounds. Mentally, this creates a bigger barrier to seeing weight loss because the bar is now that much higher to actually seeing the numbers go down.

The positives:

  • This is less than last month’s gain of 2.0 pounds, so weight gain appears to at least be slowing
  • The snack-free attempt was mostly successful in terms of reducing snacks, which should bode well for the future
  • My body fat percentage remained unchanged at 24%
  • I’m running again, which I missed for most of the month; this should also help
  • Most of the weight gain literally happened on the final day of the month, when I jumped up 1.1 pounds
  • Spread over five months, this averages out to gaining 0.5 pounds per month, which doesn’t seem as bad 😛
  • I did see actual weight loss three times during the month, proving it is actually possible!

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2023: 164.2 pounds 
Current: 166.7 pounds
Year to date: Up 2.5 pounds (was 1.2 pounds previously)

May 1: 165.2 pounds
May 31: 166.7 pounds (up 1.5 pounds)

Body fat:

May 1: 24%
May 31: 24 (unchanged) 

Historical: January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds

Snack-free, Day 9 of 9 (May 31, 2023)

donuts and bagel display
But I’ve stayed clear of donuts! Mmm, donuts. Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Pexels.com

I’m writing this one in the morning before I’ve eaten anything at all because it doesn’t matter! My snack-free attempt has been a failure, in the sense that even with very little snacking, it’s made no difference and my weight has gone up. This is a tad frustrating. I am mulling options.

EDIT: If I had weighed myself some hours later, it likely would have been down for the month, or very close to it. How do I know? Let’s just say the number two might be involved.

Anyway, I’ll keep on the no-snacking with renewed vigor in June.

And for today, I had a couple of Reese’s minis again, and more toast. But I also ran. Not to these food items, but on the lake trail.

Snack-free, Day 8 of 9 (May 30, 2023)

Warning: Some snacking.

Specifically, I had two Reese’s mini peanut butter cups (about 22 calories) and some Fritos BBQ hoops (about 120 calories).

Worse, I had two hot dogs for dinner and felt kind of gross afterwards. One would have sufficed.

Have I doomed my chances of being down in weight for the month? Very likely! Tune in tomorrow for the bitter regrets.