Health

My weight, a running tally (first week of August 2023)

I started the month at 166.6 pounds, which was not only devilish, but also up from the previous month. Today I weighed in at 168.7 pounds, meaning in just seven days I have gained 2.1 pounds.

For those who think that you can lose weight just through exercise, I’ll add that I also ran three times during those seven days, including twice where the total distance, including walking, came in at over 18 km.

Now, this is entirely my fault. Yesterday, I had two meals with bacon, for crying out loud. I was slothful to the point of being inert through the weekend. Today, I’m actually going outside. Maybe the fresh air will make me magically shed a pound. It’s possible!

Here is a robot attacking a human, because I don’t deserve a kitten today.

July 2023 weight loss report: Up 2.5 pounds

Yes, I know. How did this happen? Was it donuts? I had a few snacky days, but no real set pattern of snacking, so I’m not altogether sure what caused the weight gain (I added 0.4 pounds just today, which makes it look even worse).

I have decided for August that I must go cold turkey on snacking. Which means no snacking at all–not even cold turkey! I may allow myself the occasional banana or apple, nothing else.

The month started strong, with me down to 164.8 pounds, then got even better the second day when I dropped a massive 1.8 pounds to an even 163. I was also sick with the flu.

Once I got healthy, the fat came back, then it was a rollercoaster of up and down for the rest of the month, but trending more up than down and here we are in Fatville at the end of the month, population me.

One bit of good (?) news: My body fat percentage has gone from 24.3 to 23.9 in the past month, so maybe I’m just building lots of muscle! (I’ll ignore the fact that on January 1 it was 23.1%)

In a way, deciding to go snack-free, no exceptions, is liberating. I don’t have to think about it, I just know that if it’s not a part of a meal, I don’t eat it. Done!

We’ll see if this all proves to be a sham on August 31!

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2023: 164.2 pounds 
Current: 167.3 pounds
Year to date: Up 3.1 pounds

July 1: 164.8 pounds
July 31: 167.3 pounds (up 2.5 pounds)

Body fat:

July 1: 24%
July 31: 23.9% (down 0.1%) 

Historical: January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds

Bonus social media thoughts: A July 2023 update

I last wrote about social media stuff just a few months ago: Thinking about how I use social media: A sequel of sorts

At the time, I was checking the usual sites irregularly, as I’d switched to a bedtime routine of reading actual books. Since then, irregularly has become rarely. I just haven’t missed Instagram and Facebook, so this has been a kind of unintentional culling.

The reasons for why I haven’t missed them are summed up pretty much in the post linked above: Once I broke the routine of checking in every night, I found the content was just not interesting enough for me to tolerate the endless piles of “reels” and ads. Instead, I have been spending a bit more time on Mastodon, which has no ads (by design) and no algorithm (also by design). I only see what I want to see. I follow people, then unfollow if they don’t make my socks roll up and down. That is my bar now–you must magically animate my socks or off with you.

It’s worked out decently so far.

Part of me does kind of miss posting my photos regularly, but they were only seen by a handful of people anyway, and now I can focus on posting billions of photos to my blog instead! I think in some small way this may have slightly improved my mental health, too (not visiting FB and IG much, not the posting billions of photos to my blog part, though who can say for sure!)

And now kittens:

My watch watches me

Watching over me

Last fall, I got a Garmin Forerunner 255 to better track my running and sleeping vs. the Apple Watch (Series 5) I had previously. Generally, I quite like it. It’s not as “smart” as an Apple Watch, but it’s smart enough for me, and the battery life is insanely better. I charge it when I jump in the shower and never have to think about it otherwise.

This faboo battery life means I use it to track my sleep and while I’ve heard that smartwatches in general are only about 80-85% effective in terms of accuracy when it comes to sleep-tracking, I feel my watch knows me, almost too well.

This morning it told me my sleep suffered due to stress, and I was indeed stressed out last night. If I start stressing out about something in the moment, the watch will jump in and suggest a breathing exercise. If I get super-stressed out (this has only happened once) and my heart rate gets above a certain threshold, my watch blares an alarm at me in warning (which is somewhat ironic), so I can maybe try to calm down a bit.

Anyway, thanks, Garmin watch, for staying vigilant and reminding me to chill the heck out. I promise to do better!

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