I can’t remember the last time I had a corn dog. It was probably at a fair when I was in my teens, so about three hundred years ago. But when I think about them, they just seem weird. You take a wiener and coat it in a thick layer of fried cornmeal. It’s just an odd thing to decide to turn into a dish. I can’t even remember if I liked them. I kind of want to try one again but there’s no easy way other than buying an entire box of them in the grocer freezer. Then I’d have to figure out what to do with the rest of them. Donate them to orphans? Turn them into fertilizer? Science experiments?
But maybe this is a case where it’s better to let sleeping (corn) dogs lie.
Also, I categorized this post under Health, though I’m not entirely sure it qualifies.
The Fitbit One is a step tracker that, unlike most, does not strap onto your wrist. It comes with a clip but I always kept it in the watch pocket of my jeans where it tracked faithfully.
I am using the past tense because my Fitbit One is now dead, murdered by washing. To be more precise, when I did my last load of laundry this past Friday I forgot to take the Fitbit out of that watch pocket and realized this with five minutes left in the wash cycle. It came out dead and remains dead. It is tracking in technology Heaven now.
I’ve actually done this once before and the Fitbit One not only survived, it gave me a bonus 1400 steps from tumbling around inside the washer for 45 minutes. The difference this time is the button on it had collapsed into the unit and while it still worked fine after the button collapse, tracking just as it always has, I suspect that this created a gap for water to get in and zap everything to heck and back.
I looked into replacing my deceased device, but apparently Fitbit quietly stopped making the One awhile back. Local stores don’t stock it. The closest replacement is the Fitbit Zip, which only tracks steps and is shaped a bit like a watch, sans strap. But I have my Apple watch now for tracking and it’s on my wrist where it more easily guilts me into meeting my goals (see here for more), so I think I’ll just stick to the one device.
I feel a bit silly killing the Fitbit One like this, but I appreciate the slight de-cluttering of the technology in my life.
There is no positive way to spin these (fat) figures, but I will offer a few caveats:
I was sick for the last week of the month and did no exercise, ate about the same and was generally slothful during this time
um, that’s about it. I was going to say I had fewer days this month to lose weight, but I also had fewer days to gain weight, but I managed the latter handily
On the bright side, I did manage to remain donut-free and reduced my general snack intake. I obviously did not eliminate it, as the numbers below attest. I did slow the rate of weight gain, which will be a nice precursor to actual weight loss…this month. Yes, this month. March is Weight Loss Month. Slim is in. Svelte is the new black.
February 1: 164.9 pounds February 28: 167.5 pounds (+2.2 pounds for the month)
Year to date: From 162.3 to 167.5 pounds (up 5.2 pounds)
And the body fat:
January 1: 18.5% (30.2 pounds of fat)
February 28: 19% (32 pounds of fat–up 1.8 pounds)
This one bugs me because it just seems so random and out of the blue. Friday I was fine, Friday night I was sick.
This same sequence happened where I felt fine all day Friday and in the evening my throat had that telltale scratchiness. Unlike then, this one doesn’t seem random at all because I have been surrounded by other sick people lately, including several at work. I powered through a two-day workshop on Monday and Tuesday as it was too late to reschedule, but to my dismay actually felt worse instead of better on Tuesday. Today, upon waking early in the morning I could feel the cold nestled deep in my chest like the chest burster from Alien and opted to stay home. I like to think this is me being generous and saving fellow co-workers, among others, from experiencing the same mild agony of sneezing, running nose, sore throat and so on, but it’s really me just wanting to curl up and nap and imagine how wonderful it is to feel healthy and how can I possibly take it for granted again after being so sick? Which I will inevitably do, because that’s just the way our brains work.
My hope is that I will feel peppy enough to return to work tomorrow. My fear is that I will rank a smidgen too low on the peppy scale and be faced with choosing between a) feeling like poop but going in anyway and risk spreading my illness around or b) staying home, feeling guilty about how I feel like poop but knowing I could probably shuffle, zombie-like, through the work day somehow, especially if I loaded up on handy cold remedies first.
Today, though, the level of guilt I felt in staying home was a big fat zero. I also had very strange dreams in the morning when I’d normally be up that included:
some strange medieval setting that was a quasi-musical with a knight lamenting in song about always having to fight
another person lamenting about something where he repeated the same word three times but I can’t recall the word now, dang it
the scenery was this weird pastoral plain that felt like it was at the top of a mountain, with giant redwood-like trees that didn’t render properly until you got right next to them. Yes, it was like being in a video game with poor drawing distance.
I think there may have been fighting, but it was bloodless from what I can remember
there were other dreams that were sufficiently weird that I can only remember them being sufficiently weird
All that and I did not take NyQuil first, as I’d run out a day earlier. I’m getting more tonight and look forward to what my subconscious will present to me.
And I hope I feel at least better tomorrow. Seeing the activity rings on my watch go unfilled makes me sad.
Friday during lunch the college closed early due to snow and everyone got to start the weekend early. I was home by 2:30 p/m/ and safely tucked inside from all the snow. Yay.
Friday evening I felt that telltale tickle in my throat that said “Yep, you’re getting sick–probably that thing that knocked out a co-worker for a few days.”
Late Friday the tickle becomes more of a barb and I seek solace in a bottle of NyQuil. It mostly works.
I think about going to the Canada Games Pool on Saturday. It’s not that bad, I think. I can do it. I go to the store and earn about half my exercise goal (30 minutes) on the watch Activity app. That wasn’t so bad, I think, though the urge to nab has arisen suddenly.
I have a nice bubble bath. I nap. I do not go to the pool.
Today I wake up and the barb is gone or at least sufficiently buried to no longer feel like a bar. My sinuses are stuffed but it’s hard to tell if it’s from my ongoing sinus issues or due to this cold or whatever it is. I again muse over going for a workout. As a bonus, most of the snow has already melted away and the sun is out.
I have another bubble bath. I nap once more.
I do not work out. I give up on meeting my activity goals. Whatever streak I have is ended and I hear a little imaginary sad trombone play.
And now just past 7 p.m. I fight the urge to go to bed early, my strength ebbing away as I type. It’s too early, I think. I need to write. Or read. Or explore my vast Steam backlog. I can’t go to bed, not just because of a little cold.
Tonight I did an elliptical workout at the Canada Games Pool and it was a good, sweaty half hour in which I burned 336 calories. The bonus, as always, is being able to look down at a bevy of people with actual swimmers builds. One guy was helping with a young children’s swimming lesson and at first I thought he was sucking in his stomach. But he wasn’t. It was just so flat that it actually curved in instead of out.
My stomach does not curve in.
Also I ate a bowl of Chocolate Cheerios today. They were delicious.
As I watched ol’ inwardly curved stomach guy teach small children how not to drown (a skill I still have yet to fully master) I thought about how well my weight loss is going in this early part of 2018–I’m at 167.2 pounds and 18.9% body fat, both up from this time last year and up from pretty much all of last year–and consider the balance between exercise and snacking.
I am still exercising. This is good.
I am still snacking. This is not as good.
I am exercising less regularly. This is not really good. When combined with the snacking, the results are obvious: fat, and plenty of it.
The solution, then, is to cut down on my snacking. I lost about 40 pounds by changing my diet in 2008. Maybe I can do the same for the 10 year anniversary, Except I don’t want to lose 40 pounds because I’m still 20 pounds lighter than 2008 me, so a 40 pound loss would result in me being “tumbled down the street by a strong gust of wind” light.
But can I reduce my snacking? I’ve remained donut-free so far, but I’ve pretty much just turned to donut substitutes. Maybe reduction isn’t the answer and elimination is.
And so I pledge here on this blog and to the several people that accidentally stumble across it from time to time, perhaps hoping to find some tasty creole recipes, to go 100% snack-free.
Starting on Saturday.
Why Saturday? It’s a run day and I tend to eat less on run days. Also there are still snacks about so I need tomorrow to figure out what to do with them, even if it means shoving them into my mouth. But no more after Saturday.
I will report back on my inwardly curved stomach progress some time in March.
Things I have done to complete all three activity rings on my Apple Watch:
paced quickly back and forth in the living room
gone for a spontaneous six block walk
walk to the grocery store to buy several non-essential items
jumping jacks without the jumping
running on the spot (this can actually get your heart rate up pretty quickly, just like running where you actually move forward)
hung my arm down at my side (to get a Stand goal during a meeting. It’s a cheat but it totally works and beats suddenly standing up in a meeting and staying like that for a minute while everyone stares at you)
gotten up to use the washroom (also for the Stand goal; this is one of those win-win situations, killing two birds and all that)
reduced the Move goal for the day (when I’ve been sick. Since getting the watch this has worked every time I’ve fallen ill except one day when I was too weak and just laid like a lump and broke my streak)
The reason I’ve done all the above is to maintain a streak, because streaks create a positive feedback loop and you don’t want to break them. Breaking them is where the donut-eating starts. And Apple doesn’t allow for mulligans, so you can’t take a day off due to illness/accident/utter laziness.
It’s worked pretty well so far. I did four of these just today (I am unwell). I prefer hitting the goals all legit-like, though, because it means I’m healthy and stuff.
I did not complain today because I had no one to complain to.
Technically, that’s not true–I could complain to myself, and I kind of did, because I stayed at home to battle the worsening congestion I have been experiencing in my sinuses over the past few months.
In spring 2016 I experienced allergy-like symptoms and my doctor said it was quite possible that I had developed an allergy or two as allergies are neat that way. You can get them later in life because allergies are jerks.
Spring of 2017 saw similar symptoms but in the summer they went away, as one would expect of seasonal allergies.
Then something curious happened. When the weather started to cool and turn damp in the fall, the symptoms came back. Was I suddenly allergic to bare trees and the absence of pollen? I grumbled a bit to myself but kept on keeping on.
In the last month or so it’s gotten worse to the point that:
I sometimes get so clogged up I can’t breathe. This is never good and it sometimes happens in places where I really wouldn’t want it to happen, like on public transit or when sitting in a movie theater.
certain sleep positions will cause the same thing, to the point that I’ve started using Breathe Right strips every night just to force my nose to stay open (they actually help, too).
even when I’m not completely clogged up, I’m usually no less than 50% clogged up. As I type this my left nostril is open but the right is about 95% blocked. This will arbitrarily switch later on*.
the symptoms persist everywhere–at home and at work, in the rain and in the dark, on a train and in a car**.
The ever-persistent state concerns me because if it is an allergy, it suggests I’m allergic to something that’s ever-present, like dust or air or atoms or something. Anyway, I’m going to get tested for allergies soon. In the meantime I’ll just keep moving about rapidly, as it’s one of the few ways I can keep my sinuses reliably open. Gotta go!
Oh, all of which is to say that while I may have complained extensively to myself today about my congestion, I didn’t complain to anyone else–and I’m not complaining now! I’ve assessed the situation, made a plan of action and will be following up, because that’s how winners battle being allergic to atoms.
On to Day 20!
* in the time it took to get to the end of the post, the nostril situation has reversed. It’s all very weird.
** apologies to Dr. Suess
First, the good news: I got through the entire month donut-free. Hooray!
A tiny bit more good news: My body fat percentage went down slightly from 18.5% to 18.3%. Yes, it could be a rounding error (there may be a fat joke in there) but I’ll take it. Especially when you consider…
The not-so-good news: I started the year at 162.3 pounds. Not great, but 160 and below was in sight. Today I am improbably up to 165.3 pounds and that goal seems buried under layers of fat.
Still, I will not be discouraged! I am still running and working out on the elliptical, and I’m probably going to get regular road running shoes so I can run at lunch when the golf course trail is a gross mud pit of doom, which it is now most of the time.
One last bit of sort-of good news: In January 2017 I started at 165.9 pounds. I’m still down from that. Yes, by 0.6 pounds, but still–down, not up. So there’s that.
And the official fat tidings:
January 1: 162.3 pounds January 31: 165.3 pounds (+3 pounds)
Year to date: From 162.3 to 165.3 pounds (up 3 pounds)
And the body fat:
January 1: 18.5% (30.2 pounds of fat)
January 31: 18.3% (30.4 pounds of fat)
We went to the Canada Games Pool twice on the weekend, around 5 p.m. on Saturday and today (Sunday) around 1 p.m.
Saturday it was pretty quiet, most likely because it was around dinner time and people go out to party on Saturday night, not exercise.
Today was the opposite. The pool was packed. The swirl pool looked like one of those rocks that has a thousand sea lions on it. The other pools were bustling. Every treadmill, elliptical and all but two exercise bikes were in use. I had to wait my turn (though only a minute or so) to use an elliptical. I chalk this up to the earlier time of day, it being Sunday (“I must now work off my sins”) and the fact that it was not merely raining, it was a downpour, making any outdoor activities doomed to extreme sogginess.
I also really noticed for the first time that most people walk on the treadmills. I did see one guy actually running and felt a little bad for him, as (I have recounted before) running on treadmills feels alien and wrong. This isn’t a huge observation, I’m just not sure why I never really noticed before. And a surprising (?) number of people leave their stuff in the lockers without actually locking them (the key costs a quarter). Maybe the only thing they leave in the lockers are smelly clothes. I’d be a bit nervous if I had anything more valuable than some stinky socks in there, though. There’s nothing to stop someone from pretending a locker is theirs, plundering anything of value, then sliding over to the next one, providing a “whoops, haha, that wasn’t my locker” shrug to anyone who might glance their way.
Then again, most of the guys in the change room are in various stages of undress and eye contact, while not frowned upon per se, rarely happens because guys get nervous around other guys, especially when in various stages of undress. For both right and wrong reasons.
Anyway, I had a nice workout. The new training shoes work well and look spiffy, so I’m stylin’ while I’m sweatin’.
Following the challenge from the book A Complaint Free World, I have begun a quest to go 21 consecutive days in a row without complaining to another person. As these are modern days, I’m also including complaining on social media.
Today I have managed the trick, largely due to two things:
I have always been sensitive to what I say, how it might be perceived and how it could (potentially) be used against me. I am a long-time advocate of less is more and only giving as much information as you need to (for example, in an interview)
I worked on the service desk today, so I spent little time interacting with co-workers, which is a prime vector for complaining. Airing complaints to people you’re trying to help generally doesn’t go over well. The most I did today was observe that it was busy and that we did not have enough people and the latter is a statement of reality, not a complaint. We are officially short-staffed by one and also had someone out sick today. I believe, based on volume of requests, that we would need additional people brought in to provide what I would consider an adequate level of support. Again, it’s not a complaint, just my sizing up of the current situation.
Tomorrow I will be working alongside others and the urge and opportunity to complain will be much greater. I may have to channel my inner monk to get through successfully.
But for now, it feels kind of nice to not be seething after a very busy day. I am not happy, but I am also not stressed out. I am focused on making things work for me while doing the best I can with the resources I have.
