Dusting off my keyboard, and walking shoes Part 4

At this point I can't say if I will lose a much, if any, weight this way. I mean some people bust their butts, eat really well every day and still struggle to lose anything. I honestly don't even know what I weigh right now. As mentioned before, our scale isn't working, and unlike Dad, I don't have a job with a doctor's office in the building where I can go weight in any time I like. I have looked at and am considering buying a new scale, but in some ways, I don't want to know what it has to say.

I figure either 1, it's going to tell me I weigh more than I thought I did, thus frustrating me because not only will I have not lost anything in the past month that I know of, but it will feel like I gained, even if that isn't completely true. Option 2, it's going to tell me I'm at or below what I thought I was, at which point I will have no idea if that's just because I've not gained or lost, or because I was heavier and have since lost the weight, but will never know as I didn't have a true starting weight to begin with. Honestly, neither will help me sleep more at night, and I'm pretty happy with what I'm doing right now, whether I'm losing or not, so I think I may hold off on the whole weighing thing, at least for a little while. At the end of the day, I'm not really doing this for a number, I'm doing this to feel better, which I already am starting to, and be healthier. Knowing my actual weight isn't going to change any of the other factors of what I'm doing to meet those goals, and I have gotten kind of scale obsessed in the past, so why upset the apple cart.

 

So where does all this leave me. I'm not going to have weight updates and while it's kind of hard to quantify "how I feel" physically in an ongoing manner, my steps will hopefully continue to climb, showing how I'm gaining endurance. But mostly I'm interested right now in the emotional side of this. Sure the changes I'm making are primarily physical, but if I've learned anything over the years, it's that I will not get healthier physically if my emotional state isn't more in tact. There are lots are areas there that need to improve. I have my good days and bad, and the bad ones are still going to lead me to, not so much "turn to food" as just not care enough to weigh that serving of grapes, or even take the time to pluck and wash the grapes as opposed to grabbing a bag of chips instead. When I used to "diet" I allowed treats here and there, but it always felt like something I was struggling through that I would eventually lose motivation for and quit (which I did). For right now at least, I don't feel like I'm actually doing anything too substantial, and thus, how can I quit. The hardest part has been the walking, and I can't say I'm not going to have a day where I just don't feel like doing it anymore (today was getting there), but for now I'm excited to see all those orange bars on the app, I'm proud of the sweat after a good 2 or 3k step walk. I just spent a couple of nights in a hotel, walking up and down the halls and around the room just so I didn't break my streak. I am still driven by that red bar, and while it annoys me at times, it still motivates me to get moving once every couple of hours. I am happy with how things are right now, and glad I'm doing it, rather then dreading it and looking forward to the day I can quit. I know in my head that the only way I'm ever going to get more fit is if I am willing to do this forever, and at least for now, I don't feel like I'm struggling enough to want to give up. Maybe that will change, maybe I'll go buy a scale, see I'm up to 350 pounds and want to sit in a pool of ice cream or more likely in front of a massive juicy cheeseburger and just say to heck with it, but thinking like that is only setting myself up for failure. For now I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing, and who knows, maybe my shirts will start getting loose on me too.

 

Now you may have noticed that at the beginning of this lovely blue wall of text, in part 1, I said something had been weighing on my mind. And yes, it did have something to do with all this, but it was a separate topic of conversation entirely. However, I haven't really spoken with many people about some of this, and I felt the need to get it out there, and create a little backstory if you will, not to mention it's been 5 years since I wrote anything, so to just have me going straight into a rant followed by a little introspection felt a bit out of the blue to say the least. Also if you haven't already noticed, I'm a touch ADD and get distracted very easily. Anyway, having written so much, and as a result deciding to break this up, I decided to save my little tangent for now. 

 

 

Thanks to anyone that's actually made it through this, even if it was just reading material to help you sleep, trust me, I'm used to putting people to sleep *looks at Dad*. I know I don't often make it through a long blog, so as I said, I think I'll be breaking this up, posting a section each day, and trying to make this blog a daily thing for a while at least. I look forward to getting my thoughts out, and opening up with friends, whether they be new or old. Check back soon for my next series (yep, I’m going ahead and guessing it’ll be a series too, I'm wordy, get used to it) “Questions about relating to each other”... ok, it's a working title, we’ll see if I come up with something better between now and then. Till then, love to you all, take care, and God bless

Dusting off my keyboard, and walking shoes Part 3

To get started, I decided I was going to see what a normal day was like for myself. After all, you can't improve if you don't know where you're starting from. I was going to walk normally, eat what I wanted, and try to at least track my food on MFP. I wasn't making any real changes as of yet, just getting a feel for where I was. I already knew that I probably ate on average 3000 calories or so a day. Like I said, I had some previous experience with MFP, so I knew what a "normal" day looked like. My steps however were a mystery to me. I knew I wasn't getting anywhere near the 10,000 recommended, but had no idea I was more in the 2000 range. The good thing about the Vivofit is it sees where you are, and then eases you up slowly. I was so jazzed the first time I hit my goal, even though it was only about 3000 steps.The next day, when I only needed a couple hundred more, I was like "cool, I've got this, easy". 

Now I'll admit, in the following week or two, there were many days I still missed the goal, and one strange anomaly where I more then doubled it, but in time, I actually started making hitting that goal a priority, and I'm happy to say that if I keep it up, as of the 10th, I will have met or exceeded my steps goal for a full month, and expect to have gone from getting 2000 steps a day to nearly 8000. I still see 10,000 and think "never going to happen" but in fairness, I would have said that about 6000 when I started, and now that's a no brainer. 

In addition to the steps, I did want to do something about my diet, not the "here's a list of all the things you can't have" kind of diet, just the scientific "what is this homosapien's diet like". I mean, all living creatures have a diet, but we humans like to turn diet into a verb rather then a noun, welp, not this human. 

I still wanted to make veggies more of a priority, and start trying to get at least some handle on the calories, even though I wasn't ready for a full on commitment. MyFitnessPal recommends 1640 calories a day for me, not as bad as it could be, but man, when you can wipe out 1000 in one meal without even going that overboard, it takes a lot of careful thought to keep it under.

 So in keeping with the small steps mentality, I decided I was going to try to go with an every other day pattern to prevent getting overwhelmed by the sudden change. I would have "healthy days" (As implied before, I hate the word diet... in fact, just forget that I used it before, k?) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and give myself permission to be "normal" on Tuesday, Wednesday, and the weekend.

Welp, that lasted all of about 2 days. 

My new system was quickly trashed when our refrigerator died. I don't know about you, but when I'm trying to start something new, the stress planets must be aligned just right, or else. The freezer had been iced up for a month or more, and then our drawer styled door got stuck, not due to the ice, but something getting warped, which caused us to only be able to open it about 6 inches, and while we knew we were living on borrowed time, there was still no preparing for the whole thing to suddenly stop running giving us a mere 4 hours to get the contents of the fridge transferred... well, 4 hours if you don't open it, less once you have, but moving on... 

So in a rapid coordinated attack, Mom, Dad, and I prepared and moved the entire contents of our fridge to the outdoor refrigerator, you know, the one that's been running for 20+ years, no problem. Thanks modern advances in appliance technology. We left the freezer closed for the time, as there was no way we were going to fit all of that in the already full outdoor freezer, and with all the ice in there, I figured we had more than the recommend 24 hours to play with. So with that, my family and I went to bed, trying not to think about the day ahead of us and what we were going to do about getting it repaired/replaced asap.

The next morning... the refrigerator was running again.  Our theory is that the fan was icing up and after being off for a while, thawed out, and so on... I say it like that because this continued to be the pattern for another week or two. The fridge would come on, we'd slowly gain trust in it, move food back inside as we needed things, and it would die again, so we'd rush everything back outside once more. Needless to say, we were not bringing home many groceries and were doing our best to use things up in order to reduce the number of items being carted back and forth. 

This was not very conducive to eating "healthy" and as such, I found myself happy if I got 1 "healthy day" a week. I actually think this was the best thing that could have happened to me. If I had tried to start with my 3 or 4 days a week approach, I may have well decided to give up by now. It may not seem it, but even a 50% solution, when you've basically been doing nothing, feels like an overwhelming shift. I needed small bites to move forward, and that's what this did for me. For a few weeks it was 1 HD per week(getting tired of all the healthy days in quotes, I'm sure you can follow) then 2, and for now I'm saying that I'm up to 3 a week, though I've actually hit 4 a couple of times, and unless things change, this week may be a 2 (Update: I pushed through and am getting my 3rd HD this week today! Woo!), but no one said there wouldn't be some setbacks in my not so plan of a plan. The important thing is I'm doing it, I'm not thinking about throwing in the towel because everyday is a new day. I don't wake up thinking "I can't go on like this, I want a doughnut" I just think, hey, I want a doughnut so I'll have one, and if I don't stay under my calorie goal today, I'll just try again tomorrow. No guilt for a cheat meal or day, because that doesn't exist, it's just a full effort day, vs a normal day. Sometimes a normal day becomes a healthy day on it's own, and sometimes a healthy day gets derailed by a big juicy cheeseburger which is ok too. For now, that's good enough, and good enough is great. It's what I need to keep going, and I can promise I'm eating a lot better now overall then I was 2 months ago, so for me, that's a win.

Conclusion Tomorrow!

Dusting off my Keyboard, and walking shoes Part 2

 

 

It wasn't until realizing just how much progress my Dad has made, and watching him work hard to hang on to healthier habits over the last year or two that I too decided to give some additional healthy changes a shot. Wow, two, too, and to all in one sentence, and if we're lucky I actually used the right forms in the right context. Anyway, back to the point. Dad's lost around 75 pounds I believe at this time, and we recently had to get him some new, smaller, shirts because his old ones were looking really big on him. It may sound crazy that it took 75 pounds to finally get him a smaller size, but you have to take into consideration that my father does no clothes shopping for himself… like ever, and rarely sees the need for us replace an old shirt, even when holes have started to appear like polka dots on it. At any rate, to be completely honest, a small part of me was starting to get jealous. It's not that I didn't recognize that he was putting in the effort and I wasn't, and I am incredibly proud of him for it,  I just always took a little comfort in the fact that at least if I had to be so big, I wasn't alone. For years I have been the one in the middle. Heavier then my mom, but lighter than Dad. Not anymore though, now I'm the one at the bottom of the pyramid. 

With this typical, unfair wave of emotions starting to hit me, I decided I needed to do something about it, I figure I was going to go one of two directions if I let nature take it's course. Either feel resentful of Dad's progress, secretly hoping he failed so that the balance of our family could once again be restored (ain't I a peach), or get complacent and just accept my new role and give up all together on trying to improve. Since neither of those painted a very pretty picture, I began thinking actively about how to take some new small steps in the right direction. I still had no desire to get on the diet train, just to get detailed again, but I needed a bigger push than just "Lets set a weekly salad night" kind of goal.

Now I'll be honest, I did not have these thoughts, or reach any decisions in one day. This was weeks of feelings, thinking about said feelings, and finally a fluke that got me to where I am now, which I still haven't really told you, don’t worry, I’m getting there. 

 

 

It started with stumbling across dad's Vivofit activity watch. Mom and I had both talked about wanting to track our steps before, and as luck may have it, my dad is a compulsive gizmo collector, and was on his third step tracking device. In fairness, if I could afford it, I'd love to try 3 or 4 out myself, they all have such different features and design, and I'm just as much of a gizmo nut as him.

 

 

 

His first, a fitbit that clipped onto your pocket or something, still sits in a drawer because the charger is missing. We're also not sure if it even still works as it took a spin through the washer one day; not sure if it's waterproof, maybe we could check if we could find the dang charger! Time will tell if it ever becomes anything more then another junk drawer resident. 

 

 

 

His second, the previously mentioned Vivofit, had been sitting on his nightstand for months after being replace by a Vivosmart or something like that. The Vivosmart is cool, and has kind of a touch screen of sorts, and it gives him fireworks when he reaches his steps goal, and I am incredibly jealous of it... just not enough so to pay for my own as of yet. Anyway, I finally decided to dust off the old vivofit one day, and see if it was still working. I mean, yes, one of the big selling points of the base Vivofit line by Garmin is that the batteries only need replaced once a year, but this thing had been sitting there on his nightstand for at least a year, and worn for a few months before that, my shock was real when I discovered it was still ticking along just fine.

So of course, being the tech junkie I am, I went straight to downloading the Garmin connect app on my phone, syncing it up, getting my info all in there, along with the last weight I knew I was before our scale decided to flip out and stop working. On top of that, I found that you could link your Garmin account to MyFitnessPal, which I had used with some success in the past and really like for the "diet" side of things. That was just the icing on the cake... figuratively of course. All of the sudden, this was actually getting fun, for the first time since I started thinking about doing something, I was motivated to stop thinking about it and do! ...it... the something I mean

 

See you tomorrow for part 3!

Dusting off my keyboard, and walking shoes Part 1

So I can't say for sure what suddenly struck me today that lead me to go look up my old blog. I haven't thought about it in ages, and couldn't even remember the last time I posted anything to it (thankfully blogger informed me it's been about 5 years, so I can wonder no more). I have had many times over the past years that I have wished I had someone to talk to about this or that, or even considered just writing my feelings down for myself only, but never did, or if I started, I got distracted and never finished. But for some reason I thought of this today, a day where I'm not sad, or stressed really, a day that's just about like any other day in my somewhat non conventional life, but a day where I felt inspired to talk about something that had been on my mind the past week or so. If no one ever sees this, that'll be just fine, but I thought hey, why not clear the cobwebs off the old blog. So here goes.

*

Just after saying that, my dad called me to see if I wanted to watch a show with him while he ate... whatever meal comes at 2pm... so we can see how the whole distraction thing has happened in the past. Anyway, here goes, take 2.

*

So as most who know me already knows, I have been overweight most of my life. Sure I was a skinny active kid as so many of us start, but by age 10 or so I was packing on the pounds. No big surprise, both of my parents have been overweight my whole life, so my eating and activity role models weren't the best. Do I blame them, absolutely not, but it does give a foundation to why I am the way I am. Like mom, I've done some dieting here and there, but never for very long, and unlike her, I've never really had much success only to end up putting it all back on plus some. I think the most I've ever lost was about 25 pounds, but to be honest, I'm not even sure about that. After my last attempt, which lasted about 3 months, I was ready to do what Mom did years ago and throw in the towel. Not because I didn't want to get healthier, but because I didn't want to keep getting fatter by trying and failing again and again. There is science to show that every time you lose weight and end up putting it back on, the body seems to add a few pounds, just to be safe. Wouldn't want to run out of fuel if I suddenly decided to start starving it of that nice 4000 calorie diet it's so fond of. 

So until recently the most I was trying to do in the way of being healthier was getting my water in daily, and trying to get more veggies worked into my meals. That last one has always been a sticking point for me as there are very few ways I actually enjoy vegetables, and most of them involve adding some form of sugar or fat. I don't love the water thing either, I'd much rather be throwing back real sugar soda's (the southerner in me wants to say coke's so bad, but at least I'm not saying pop) all day then even look at plain, ol, boring water. But I have conditioned myself to reach for a bottle of water before a sugary substitute about 80% of the time, which is something at least.

 

Check back tomorrow for Part 2