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.
On February 3, 2018 I declared myself a victor in the 21-day Complaint Free challenge. By August I had started the challenge again, feeling I had lapsed. According to the entries on this very blog, I lasted seven days on my second attempt before going curiously silent about the whole thing.
Here we are more than two years after my initial success, in the middle of a global pandemic, a recession caused by the same, worldwide protests over police brutality and Donald Trump is President of the United States. If ever there was a time where it felt A-OK to complain, 2020 would seem to be that time. It’s also a great time to challenge myself to rise above the urge to complain, to stay positive and focus on the good, to find solutions instead of just griping about things, especially things I can change.
And so I have donned my purple Complaint Free bracelet again. For the first day I think I got through okay. If I complained to someone else (and I did ask some people to verify if I had), it was too subtle to notice, or I just wasn’t paying enough attention. While either is possible, I think I came through with a legit victory for the day.
The toughest part, as before, will be refraining from sarcasm, or at least sarcasm in the form of “complaining with humor”, which is very close to all sarcasm.
I completed the initial challenge very quickly–the book notes it takes most people 8-10 months to hit 21 consecutive days of no complaints–so there was always that nagging doubt I had complained a few times and not noticed it. We’ll see if I get similar results this time.
A miracle in the plaguelands! While the world struggles to flatten the curve, I have struggled to flatten my own curve and the past few months of working from home have led to me getting dangerously close to my previous high bar on weight (from 2008). Not good.
But for the first time in awhile, my weight has gone down instead of up.
This month was the first real attempt to curb snacking and exercise a bit more. I have been walking more and did a treadmill run, but regular jogging is still not a thing, so I have work to do on exercise, but at least I’ve (re)started.
I have cut snacking, but not enough. Despite being down 1.5 pounds for the month, my actual body fat increased slightly, so I’m in a holding pattern right now.
For June, then, I need to improve my efforts, to break out of the holding pattern and start seeing numbers drop. I’ve done it before; I can do it again.
May 1: 178.5 pounds May 31: 177 pounds (down 1.5 pounds)
Year to date: From 171.8 to 177 pounds (up 5.2 pounds)
And the body fat:
May 1: 23.2% (41.4 pounds of fat) May 30: 23.5% (41.7 pounds of fat) (up 0.3 pounds)
Like puberty, the global pandemic has been impossible to avoid. But at least this time my voice didn’t change.
While the future remains unwritten and hopefully won’t turn into a real life recreation of The Stand, here’s what’s changed (and what hasn’t) during life in a global pandemic.
Also, I like lists.
Here’s what’s changed:
Work from home. This is the biggie, of course. I started work from home (WFH) on March 18, so it’s been about two months, though it feels like a lot longer. The idea that this would happen at the beginning of the year was absurd. I expect to be WFH at least through the summer, which will mean at least six months total, and it could extend to the end of the year, which would be 10 months total. That’s a lot of commute time saved. UPDATE, November 29, 2021: WFH lasted until I quit in August 2021 (16 months). Service desk staff had to return to campus in September.
Speaking of commute time, I have no commute. I used to ride on two different SkyTrain lines and spend just over one hour traveling to or from work. Now I roll out of bed, cross the living room and I’m there. My commute has gone from over 60 minutes to under 10 seconds.
I am getting more sleep. This is directly related to no commute, as I am getting up an hour and a half later now.
I am saving money. This is related to WFH and having no commute. I am not buying a two-zone monthly fare card (currently $131), plus my use of transit has dropped to near zero. I have been on the SkyTrain twice in the last two months, versus 44-50 trips per month previously.
I am gaining weight. Snacking is a lot more convenient. I am working on this, but I have added 5+ pounds since this began.
I am exercising less. I’ve been doing walks, both on and off the treadmill, but I’ve only done a single run outdoors. I’m just not comfortable running outside right now, even though I know it’s not actually high risk or anything.
Reading time has declined. I am currently five books behind on my modest Goodreads Reading Challenge for 2020 because my reading time used to be during my commute and, well, see the second bullet point. I’m starting to finally read again, so may start catching up on this.
Shopping has shifted online or been severely reduced. I’ve purchased stuff from Apple and Best Buy online (and Amazon, of course) and had it delivered, something I generally would not do (I’d just go to the respective stores). This usually means I wait longer to get something (which is fine). In-person shopping is always done solo and no more than once a week if possible. Shopping in-store is relatively unpleasant now due to physical distancing requirements and some members of the public being indifferent or actively hostile to these requirements. The online shopping experience has varied as follows:
Amazon: The closest locker is closed, so they deliver direct to door. Typically, once they get in the building, the drivers leave packages at the condo door. This means stuff could potentially be stolen. Not good.
Apple: They ship free (yay) via UPS. UPS comes to the building, they try buzzing our suite number (this doesn’t work, as the buzzer number is not the same as the suite number–which they can see if they read the list of occupants next to the buzzer), then leave a note and I have to pick up the package the next day at a store a few blocks away. This is not convenient, but it’s less risk.
Best Buy. They ship through Canada Post (Update: they actually rotate through Canada Post and couriers, depending on availability). If the package is large, the delivery person will leave a key to a Canada Post large item locker in the lobby of our building, across from the mailboxes. This is convenient, and I wished Apple shipped this way, even if it meant a day or two extra for delivery.
What hasn’t changed:
Work is mostly the same. With in-classroom issues eliminated, the actual work I do is much the same as before, I just do it from a desk at home instead of a desk on campus. I like WFH and hope to keep doing it because not having that one hour commute is a gigantic improvement in quality of life.
Still playing Diablo 3. But I’m nearly done getting my final character to level 70. After that, all the treasure goblins in the world will not bring me back (maybe).
Mealtimes and other routines, like a walk at noon. Times and locations have shifted, but the activities are still the same.
And other miscellaneous stuff.
This weekend marks the beginning of the easing of some restrictions, but I don’t expect things will change much for me. Physical distancing will still be in place when shopping and many mall stores will remain closed (like Apple, for example) or will be restricting their sales to things like curbside pickup. I guess we can go to provincial parks again (during the day), though as I type this it’s pouring rain. Normally that’s a bummer on a holiday weekend, but this time it may just help us flatten the curve a little more when so many people are anxious to get out and get “back to normal”–something I suspect will not be happening for quite a while.
The sign at Hume Park warning that the playground (er, “park feature or area”) is currently closed now has a new sticker on it warning of a $200 fine.
“You there, little boy. Let’s see some ID. You’re being fined 200 clams for riding on that swing set.”
“But I don’t have any clams.”
“It’s a metaphor, kid.”
“A meta for what?”
But while the city is turning up the heat in some ways, they are turning it down in others, as the first signs of going back to a kind of normal have emerged. Here’s another sign, this one at the tennis courts.
As long as you are unorganized and have few, if any, friends, you are good to play tennis again. So that’s something.
In the meantime, a weekend of unseasonably hot weather meant people were jamming the parks and beaches, physical distancing be damned. It will be interesting to see what new cases look like in a few weeks. The week ahead appears to be largely wet, so that should dampen a lot of venturing out.
Also in the meantime, I got confirmation today that the college is committed to online courses for the entire summer, as well as for the fall semester, barring those that require specialized equipment or face-to-face interaction–but only if it’s deemed safe to do so. It is expected that “most” classes will remain online.
My thinking on this is that they realize how difficult it is to do physical distancing on the campus–it’s essentially designed to jam people together, not keep them apart–and want to delay this until a vaccine or other effective workaround can be ironed out that would keep the majority of people safe, rather than turning an education into a trip through the plaguelands.
What this means is that I’m all but guaranteed to be working from home until September and may be working from home until December. Basically, for the rest of the year.
While I like my new no-commute very much. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this.
