Or to be more precise, the air quality currently stinks, due to smoke.
This morning, the Air Quality Index (AQI) was 3, which is a bit higher than normal. It is now 9, and shows thusly on my iPhone:
High Health Risk! Yikes. Also, it was very warm and muggy, which is probably contributing. The AQ map looks very angry:
I do not live in a Magic 8 ball, despite appearances.
I went for a walk and it smelled just like that map:
The smoke is coming from wildfires, so in a way, we’re lucky that it didn’t get here until relatively late in the season. It’s likely to persist until we see a significant change in the weather (showers, etc.) All part of the magic of climate change!
Yes, I was actually kind of good this month, food-wise! I was also very active, running and walking all hither and yon.
I may have sweated off some weight due to the humidity, too. In any event, I am down 1.8 pounds for the month, and the same amount for the year, too, which looks worse that way, but I’m down, so it’s a win as per me.
Onward from here!
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 165.0 pounds Year to date: Down 1.8 pounds
August 1: 166.8 pounds August 31: 165.0 pounds (down 1.8 pounds)
Body fat: August 1: 25.1% August 31: 24.8% (down 0.3%)
Skeletal muscle mass: August 1: 29.7 kg August 31: 29.5 kg (down 0.2 kg)
If I was a musician and Robert Plant hadn’t already used it, I would totally make an album called “Now and Zen.”
Here are some things I find that produce a zen-like quality for me, where I lose myself in the activity, and my mind can unlock to drift and ponder and take me away from the world for a while.
Running. That runner’s high thing you hear about is real. Also, this can vary a bit based on conditions. If the terrain is slippery due to ice and whatnot, it’s harder to find zen because I’m concerned about face-planting. But generally, running is very calming to my brain.
Drawing. Especially when I do bird art, which is almost like colouring in a colouring book. The application of colour is very soothing.
Writing. Even on this blog, sometimes! The quote at the top of this site is accurate, but a lot of writers forget how it feels to get in the proverbial zone. You are taken, briefly, to another place, and it’s great. When you leave, it’s almost like a memory wipe occurs, so writing becomes a “chore” again, instead of a secret delight.
Picking up litter with a picker and bucket. This requires a certain amount of hand-eye coordination because grabbing cigarette butts off the ground can be trickier than you’d think. But the activity is so mellow and gentle, it’s nice just to slowly move around the condo complex and surrounding area and plink away at the occasional bits of litter.
Of late, I’ve found myself getting too easily upset about things, whether it’s the collapse of democracy, milk prices going up again or our local strata council making silly decisions. I get tense. I get angry. I utter profane things under my breath. Sometimes over my breath, too. I don’t sleep as well. I could be incubating an ulcer, for all I know.
I made the decision that I needed to change how I react to stressful events over concerns of both my mental and physical well-being. I had some ideas:
Meditation. I have thought about this many times, but I am rejecting it, because my brain just doesn’t work in a way that would easily allow meditation. You may think this is a cop-out, and you may be right. But I make the rules here and my ever-busy brain says find another way.
Exercise. Well, I do that, and it helps. Just not enough. I can’t exercise all the time, though if I did, maybe I’d develop mutant powers, so I won’t rule this out entirely.
Fingers in ears, saying, “La la la!” I like the simplicity, but I’d probably need to be seven years old for it to be truly effective, and evidence suggests my aging is not reversing.
Mindfulness training. Basically, learning a bunch of techniques to better train your brain to cope. It can be quite effective, but I’m lazy and looking for a quick fix. I’ll use this as a last resort.
And finally, my chosen solution, after rewatching the Harry Enfield sketch, “Women: Know Your Limits!”
When something upsets me, I’ll now say the following, either to myself or unwitting recipients nearby:
I don’t know anything about the gold standard [substitute upsetting item here in place of “gold standard”], I’m afraid, but I do love little kittens. They’re soft and furry.
That’s right, I’m just going to dismiss reality. It can’t upset me if I take no heed of it. I know my limits! My mind will be ever-full of kittens, so soft and furry.
I have had a low level ache in my abdomen for a few months now. At first, I thought it might be tied to my kidney infection earlier this year (Tip: Do not get a kidney infection. It is no fun.) Eventually I realized it didn’t really fit the pattern of an infection (pain, then ongoing pain that doesn’t go away until treated), as there are times I don’t notice it, times I can’t ignore it and others when it’s just sort of there.
Yesterday, my doctor, after extensive poking, figured it might be a sore abdominal muscle that is still sore. This is the ideal cause, as some stretching and exercise should get it back to normal. As a precaution, he also had me go in for some blood work, something I’ve done so often this year it is a non-event now.
While still in the exam room, he wanted to test his theory by applying anesthetic to the suspect muscle, then see if the pain persisted with further prodding once the area had become numb. To do this, he had to inject the anesthetic into the muscle, which he did twice (the second time because he thought he may not have injected far enough to actually get into the muscle).
I had to admit, while getting blood taken is old news, I wasn’t so sure about how I felt about having multiple injections into my belly. It turned out to be no big deal, though it was a bit weird to have this numb part of my abdomen for the rest of the day.
In nay case, the bottom line is this: We need snazzy robot bodies.
The good news is 1.1 pounds is probably too high to be a rounding error. The other good news is down is better than up. The less good news is 1.1 pounds is not a lot. But bonus adjacent-to-good news is I was down more and then toward the end of the month hit a five-day skid in which I gained, gained, gained. Maybe it was all muscle? Let’s find out!
(BTW, the low this month was 165.9 pounds, which would have put me down for the year. But alas.)
As you can see, there was little movement across any of the stats, which makes sense with the modest weight loss.
Halfway through the year, it’s becoming clear to me that my body is not shedding weight because I am taking in too many calories. This likely means (apart from snacking) that I am underestimating my calories, so I may try to be more precise on some of the usual stuff I eat and see what happens.
And less snacking, of course.
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 167.3 pounds Year to date: Up 0.5 pounds
June 1: 168.4 pounds June 30: 167.3 pounds (down 1.1 pounds)
Body fat: June 1: 25.8% June 30: 25.6% (down 0.2%)
Skeletal muscle mass: June 1: 29.8 kg June 30: 29.7 (down 0.1 kg)
After gaining a whopping 4.6 pounds last month, this month I am happy to report a loss of an even greater 6.0 pounds even!
Now, it’s true there were extenuating circumstances, namely the evening of May 20, when I got a stomach bug that caused me to violently eject everything from my stomach. I dropped 4.9 pounds overnight as a result.
But I ended up gaining back only 0.1 pounds over the next 11 days, which is not how these situations typically go. What was different this time?
It took multiple days for my appetite to come back
I resisted buying a lot of heavily processed snacks, for fear of heaving them
The above reinforced my reduced snacking for the month
I ran as regularly this month as I could, before and after The Heaving
Basically, I behaved.
Now, extrapolating from even a month is tricky. My body fat percentage is allegedly only down 0.1%–pretty much the same–despite losing six pounds. But my muscle mass is up 0.5% from the running and whatever, and muscle is heavier than fat. So…I dunno!
The important thing is all the bad stats are down, the good stats are up, and I’m heading in the right direction. After suddenly being way up for the year to date, I am now up a mere 0.2 pounds, an amount I shed just last night.
Here’s to June being all slim ‘n sexy.
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 167.0 pounds Year to date: Up 0.2 pounds
May1: 173.0 pounds May 31: 167.0 pounds (down 6.0 pounds)
Body fat: May 1: 26.1% May 31: 26.0% (down 0.1%)
Skeletal muscle mass: May 1: 29.9 kg May 31: 30.4 kg (up 0.5 kg)
A few days ago, my partner came down with what appeared to be a stomach virus. Like a king, he found himself spending a lot of time on the throne.
After yesterday’s run (which went quite well), I noticed my stomach felt off and mostly brushed it aside, though a tiny alarm bell was ringing way in the back.
I had a glass of chocolate milk when I got home and two Aussie bites–a nutty, oatmeal/high fibre kind of snack. Jeff was running late, so I figured I’d be on my own for dinner, but strangely I wasn’t hungry.
Eventually I found myself laying on the bed and dozing intermittently. Around 8 p.m. I got up and felt much worse. I then made a tactical error and not just returned to the bed, but got under the sheets. I proceeded to barf two times, suddenly and without notice.
I managed to get up and finished off in the toilet. I was no king, I was a peon, kneeling before the throne.
About an hour later, round 2 came and at this point it seemed my stomach was now pretty much empty. A little while later, I had to go to the bathroom, and that’s when I moved from peon to king.
Today, I have been vomit-free and my bathroom duties seem to be back to normal, if minimal. I still don’t feel great, but feel a little better.
And the weight? When I stepped on the scale this morning, I had lost almost five pounds overnight. One again, getting sick is a great way to lose weight. Too bad it’s always temporary. I didn’t actually lose weight, of course, I just emptied out all the food and liquid in my stomach. I mean, there’s some minor weight loss there, as that food/liquid will not go into making me more muscular/fat, but still.
The last time I remember throwing up was in the early 90s. Having now re-experienced it, I will be happy if it never happens again. The sensation of being on one knee, facing down into a toilet bowl, and waiting to see if your stomach will involuntarily convulse and push out whatever is in it, is, in a word, gross. Also, awful. And other words. I have a thesaurus here.
April, particularly the first two-thirds of the month, was very stressful. I started out with modest weight loss that would have continued through the month if my eating habits had remained unchanged. They obviously did not, as I ate food to cope with stress. I ate all the food.
By the end of the month, things had settled down, but my weight didn’t, it was still tracking a couple of pounds up. In the final week, I decided I had to change my eating habits and do so in a drastic way.
That starts tomorrow, on May 1st.
But rather than ease my way into this new snack-free regime by cutting back, I did the opposite. I ate snacks. I ate a lot of snacks. I wanted to make myself sick of snacks.
Example: Yesterday I ate three candy bars (and more). The calorie total was more than double my entire breakfast.
I gained another half-pound overnight, to finish the month up a whopping 4.6 pounds. I broke the 173 pound mark for the first time this year. (Almost) all the stats are going in the wrong direction (see below for more, including the exception). I’ll likely be up again tomorrow.
But tomorrow, May 1st, is when the new plan begins. No snacks, unless it’s fruit or veggies. Calorie-rich dinners like pizza will be exceptions. Salads? More.
But we’ll see. In the meantime: FatVille, Population: Me. But hopefully the road leads to SlimVille or at least NormalWeightVille.
One plus side: Probably thanks to the running, I added 0.5 kg of muscle (about 1.1 pounds) this month, so woo on that. My total body fat only increased 0.2% as well. Maybe I’m just big-boned1lolz.
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 173.2 pounds Year to date: Up 6.4 pounds
April 1: 168.6 pounds April 30: 173.2 pounds (up 4.6 pounds)
Body fat: April 1: 26.5% April 30: 26.7% (up 0.2%)
Skeletal muscle mass: April 1: 29.9 kg April 30: 30.4 kg (up 0.5 kg)
But what I am planing on doing is what I did way back in June 2008 when I stepped on my scale and, over its piercing screams of horror, saw that I weighed 187.5 pounds (it could only show half pound increments, which seems like an odd limitation for something that only does one thing).
Today I weighed in at 171.9 pounds (thanks, modern-day precision!), which even a non-math expert like me can see is only about 16ish pounds short of my roly-poly former self.
(At this point I was going to share a screenshot taken on my iPhone 5 in 2012 showing my weight in MyFitnessPal as being something like 143 pounds, except I cannot find the shot now. So just imagine it here.)
The point here is my approach to getting to my desired goal of 150 pounds is not working.
It didn’t work in the early 2000s, either. In order to actually lose weight back in 2008, I had to redo my entire food plan and stick to it. I did and lost over 40 pounds. I don’t need to lose 40 pounds this time, so I already have a head start!
Here is my plan, which I will start on May 1, 2025:
No snacks, except for fruit or veggies. And no cheating by counting something like “strawberry shortcake” as fruit.
I will wean myself off non-sugar soda over the space of a month or so. This is to avoid nasty caffeine headaches from withdrawal, which has happened before.
