People have been asking about my allergies and the new things I find difficult to eat since my stomach decided that it was going to stop working properly (yay Ehlers Danlos). Also: they won’t fit on most standard forms, so I figured I’d put together a post and just link people to it. Easy.
Allergies:
Eggs (including mayonnaise)
Nuts (including almonds and pine nuts; severely allergic to pecans)
Seafood (all fish and shellfish)
Beans/ peas/ lentils (most pulses/ legumes; please note exceptions: soya, carageenan, black bean and locust bean are fine)
Chocolate
Peanuts (violently allergic)
Carob (also E410)
Intolerances:
Acidic substances (fruits are tricky, especially fresh fruit (dried is often okay), and I specifically can’t have much tomato or citrus; onion also appears to be problematic in quantity)*
Strong spices (especially chilli)
Monosodium Glutamate (E621/ MSG)*
Aspartame/ Akesulfame K (E590/ E591)*
Sodium Metabisulphite (E223)
Sulphur Dioxide
Tartrazine (E102)*
Quinoline Yellow (E104)
Sunset Yellow FCF; Orange Yellow S (E110)*
(The intolerances aren’t going to kill me if I have them, but the ones with the * will definitely make my experience unpleasant!)
Showing posts with label diet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diet. Show all posts
Tuesday, 27 November 2018
Monday, 18 September 2017
Target Practice
Well, it’s been nearly two weeks since my last update, packed full of goals as it was. What’s occurring?
I’d like to say I’m sleeping better, but that’s a Whole Other Thing that we’ll have to address in a separate blog post, possibly a couple of months down the line when all this has bedded in properly.
Haha. Bedded in? Bedded... Bed. Coz sleep, coz. Yeah. Ahem. Anyway. See you soon!
1. Stairs
These are a lot easier now. I am firmly into the habit, despite having to occasionally leave a colleague or two looking mournfully out past the closing lift doors at me. It’s rare I don’t make it up the stairs in the same time as the lift takes, more or less, which is heartening. I wouldn’t say I’m entirely non-breathless, but (unless I take the stairs two at a time, which I sometimes like to do on the final flight, and even then) I’m a lot less breathless when I reach my desk.
So that’s nice.
2. Lunchtime Walks
This has been going pretty well. I’ve managed to do this (or roughly this) every workday lunchtime, and have even fitted in a couple on non-workdays (walking to Newmarket Road and back on Wednesday - 1.4 miles either way; walking to Milton Country Park on Sunday - 1.5 miles either way). In fact, I definitely seem to have hooked into the “feeling weird if I don’t do it” vibe pretty quickly. In terms of goals, I do seem to have upped my pace for the lunchtime walks, which is groovy, though measuring inconsistencies (the first few times I kept forgetting to switch off the recording device until I had been pottering around in the canteen for a few minutes) mean that it’s hard to say whether I would have recorded a lower completion time in the first few anyway... However, the mean pace is consistently better (though sometimes a little slower than my average if I’m walking with someone else - getting breath to speak and all that). That one feels like a solid win so far (though I’ve had few weather challenges to overcome), even though I do feel like a dapper gent taking a lunchtime constitutional (yes, I do wear my famous hat).
3. Isometrics
Bloody isometrics. Well, I’ve finally hit upon a way to do them at least once a day - tag them on the end of my morning physio. Fuck it. I can always to an end-of-working-day one as an extra, but I’ve had trouble working that in, so I’ll at least have that one. I’ve only done this twice now, though, so no stats yet.
Time for some other goals/ feedback
4. Hydration
I’ve been using the FitBit to monitor my water intake. It’s a bit rubbish, which I knew it was, so I’ve been using various methods to improve that, and (apart from this morning, because Monday morning, amirite?) I’ve been doing pretty well. Not, you know, excellently, but better. And my evidence on the benefits on days with proper hydration in them is fairly bloody empirical, but you don’t want those details.
Advantages: All of them? Good for digestion, skin, metabolism, oh yeah and staying alive.
Disadvantages: Obviously I need to wee more. That’s part of the point though, so hey.
Goal: Get up to drinking about two litres of water a day without having to poke myself in the head to do so.
5. Fitstar
As previously reported, I selected the “Get Strong” program from Fitstar, packed full of strength-building and cardio exercises in three-times-a-week, twenty-minute sets. So far it has not proved onerous to do the three sessions a week (so far Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays), though it’s significantly easier to not feel self-conscious when bobbing up and down to some perky fitness expert’s generic instructions when no-one’s in the house. (“Tighten those abs!” “Remember to keep a straight back!” “Keep it light - land on the balls of your feet!”) And the program does seem to keep track of which exercises I label “Too Easy!” and “Brutal!”, pushing me where I’ve indicated I’m up for that and not where I’ve said “Nope”.
Unfortunately, there are a fair number of exercises which require the adherent to put weight on one or both knees. After gingerly trying a couple of these and suffering both math and aftermath, I now instantly skip any with weight-bearing knee forms, label them “Brutal!” and indicate that I’ve done zero. Apart from the “press-ups from knee” which I do from the toes. So.
The exercises get my heart-rate up and many are moves I’d never have considered (read: in some cases didn’t even know they were A Thing). Some are nearly impossible to do properly in my living room, so require improvisation, improved immensely when I realised that I could pause the instructions while I rearranged things to roughly match.
Apart from some tightness and pain in and behind my knees which felt terrifyingly like a return to horrible old symptoms of 2011/12 until I ruthlessly did all the right things to loosen stuff, these exercises appear to be taxing me exactly the right amount.
Goal: Just keep going and ingrain the habit.
6. Weight
Argh. So, the side-effect of being more active? Yep - weight-loss. Which, in my case, is a bugger, and leads to friends advising me to eat more, and put on some weight.
I. Am. Trying. Believe me.
The balance of “types of food that won’t fuck with my now-shitty digestive system”, “quantities of food/ drink that won’t fuck with my now-shitty digestive system”, “time periods of ingestion that won’t fuck with my now-shitty digestive system”, and “oh, yeah, I’m still allergic to loads of stuff” with “go on, eat more and put on weight” is proving... problematic.
I am going to try protein shakes next. Because fuck it. There’s been very little advice online about this, and most of it is: “Hey, ladies, you don’t want to put on loads of fat (urrgh, fat), you probably mean you want to pile on lean muscle; here, have an avocado.” And while a) avocados are nice (especially mashed up with bacon and garlic-infused olive oil on brown toast), and b) more lean muscle would also be nice, c) I am finding it hard to keep warm when stationary and my less-padded arse has difficulty sitting for extended periods of time, especially on hard surfaces, dammit. A significant number of “weight gain diets for women” searches have led to the above advice, or even straight to weight-loss advice because apparently I don’t know what I’m talking about plus Western culture’s obsession with thinness = healthiness which gjjh&*HJ*$%&Jkj, basically.
Any advice on this would be super-gratefully received. In the meantime, I’m due to see the gastroenterologist in October, and I’m going to ask for a referral to a dietician/ nutritionist for this very reason, because at least they won’t advise me to eat more eggs, unlike even the actually vaguely helpful websites do. (I am super-allergic to eggs.)
And how is this all making you feeeeel?
Ah, that one. (How about super fucking hungry all the time?) Well, I’m feeling a bit more confident about my body and its ability to cope with physical challenges. I’m also enjoying the fact that I appear to be (slowly) gaining a measure of discipline over a lot of these things, which in turn makes me feel better about myself, which in turn makes me more likely to Do Things Right, so...
I’m also noticing a (unexpected at this stage) small but significant set of changes to my body shape and, well, the best word I can think of is texture. Specifically:
This has been going pretty well. I’ve managed to do this (or roughly this) every workday lunchtime, and have even fitted in a couple on non-workdays (walking to Newmarket Road and back on Wednesday - 1.4 miles either way; walking to Milton Country Park on Sunday - 1.5 miles either way). In fact, I definitely seem to have hooked into the “feeling weird if I don’t do it” vibe pretty quickly. In terms of goals, I do seem to have upped my pace for the lunchtime walks, which is groovy, though measuring inconsistencies (the first few times I kept forgetting to switch off the recording device until I had been pottering around in the canteen for a few minutes) mean that it’s hard to say whether I would have recorded a lower completion time in the first few anyway... However, the mean pace is consistently better (though sometimes a little slower than my average if I’m walking with someone else - getting breath to speak and all that). That one feels like a solid win so far (though I’ve had few weather challenges to overcome), even though I do feel like a dapper gent taking a lunchtime constitutional (yes, I do wear my famous hat).
3. Isometrics
Bloody isometrics. Well, I’ve finally hit upon a way to do them at least once a day - tag them on the end of my morning physio. Fuck it. I can always to an end-of-working-day one as an extra, but I’ve had trouble working that in, so I’ll at least have that one. I’ve only done this twice now, though, so no stats yet.
Time for some other goals/ feedback
4. Hydration
I’ve been using the FitBit to monitor my water intake. It’s a bit rubbish, which I knew it was, so I’ve been using various methods to improve that, and (apart from this morning, because Monday morning, amirite?) I’ve been doing pretty well. Not, you know, excellently, but better. And my evidence on the benefits on days with proper hydration in them is fairly bloody empirical, but you don’t want those details.
Advantages: All of them? Good for digestion, skin, metabolism, oh yeah and staying alive.
Disadvantages: Obviously I need to wee more. That’s part of the point though, so hey.
Goal: Get up to drinking about two litres of water a day without having to poke myself in the head to do so.
5. Fitstar
As previously reported, I selected the “Get Strong” program from Fitstar, packed full of strength-building and cardio exercises in three-times-a-week, twenty-minute sets. So far it has not proved onerous to do the three sessions a week (so far Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays), though it’s significantly easier to not feel self-conscious when bobbing up and down to some perky fitness expert’s generic instructions when no-one’s in the house. (“Tighten those abs!” “Remember to keep a straight back!” “Keep it light - land on the balls of your feet!”) And the program does seem to keep track of which exercises I label “Too Easy!” and “Brutal!”, pushing me where I’ve indicated I’m up for that and not where I’ve said “Nope”.
Unfortunately, there are a fair number of exercises which require the adherent to put weight on one or both knees. After gingerly trying a couple of these and suffering both math and aftermath, I now instantly skip any with weight-bearing knee forms, label them “Brutal!” and indicate that I’ve done zero. Apart from the “press-ups from knee” which I do from the toes. So.
The exercises get my heart-rate up and many are moves I’d never have considered (read: in some cases didn’t even know they were A Thing). Some are nearly impossible to do properly in my living room, so require improvisation, improved immensely when I realised that I could pause the instructions while I rearranged things to roughly match.
Apart from some tightness and pain in and behind my knees which felt terrifyingly like a return to horrible old symptoms of 2011/12 until I ruthlessly did all the right things to loosen stuff, these exercises appear to be taxing me exactly the right amount.
Goal: Just keep going and ingrain the habit.
6. Weight
Argh. So, the side-effect of being more active? Yep - weight-loss. Which, in my case, is a bugger, and leads to friends advising me to eat more, and put on some weight.
I. Am. Trying. Believe me.
The balance of “types of food that won’t fuck with my now-shitty digestive system”, “quantities of food/ drink that won’t fuck with my now-shitty digestive system”, “time periods of ingestion that won’t fuck with my now-shitty digestive system”, and “oh, yeah, I’m still allergic to loads of stuff” with “go on, eat more and put on weight” is proving... problematic.
I am going to try protein shakes next. Because fuck it. There’s been very little advice online about this, and most of it is: “Hey, ladies, you don’t want to put on loads of fat (urrgh, fat), you probably mean you want to pile on lean muscle; here, have an avocado.” And while a) avocados are nice (especially mashed up with bacon and garlic-infused olive oil on brown toast), and b) more lean muscle would also be nice, c) I am finding it hard to keep warm when stationary and my less-padded arse has difficulty sitting for extended periods of time, especially on hard surfaces, dammit. A significant number of “weight gain diets for women” searches have led to the above advice, or even straight to weight-loss advice because apparently I don’t know what I’m talking about plus Western culture’s obsession with thinness = healthiness which gjjh&*HJ*$%&Jkj, basically.
Any advice on this would be super-gratefully received. In the meantime, I’m due to see the gastroenterologist in October, and I’m going to ask for a referral to a dietician/ nutritionist for this very reason, because at least they won’t advise me to eat more eggs, unlike even the actually vaguely helpful websites do. (I am super-allergic to eggs.)
And how is this all making you feeeeel?
Ah, that one. (How about super fucking hungry all the time?) Well, I’m feeling a bit more confident about my body and its ability to cope with physical challenges. I’m also enjoying the fact that I appear to be (slowly) gaining a measure of discipline over a lot of these things, which in turn makes me feel better about myself, which in turn makes me more likely to Do Things Right, so...
I’m also noticing a (unexpected at this stage) small but significant set of changes to my body shape and, well, the best word I can think of is texture. Specifically:
- there appears to be more intense wall of muscle around my abdomen, especially evident when standing.
- My thighs and calves are definitely more heavily muscled. Again, this is more evident when standing, but the calves, in particular, seem to be changing shape even at rest. Their texture at rest is different. Sorry - I can’t explain it better than that they’re denser? less wobbly? Maybe...
- My forearms also have this change of texture. Not that they were ever particularly wobbly, but... yeah, they feel denser.
- My biceps appear no different, but my triceps appear more defined, especially when my arm’s extended.
I am stiff a lot of the time - sitting still really does cramp me up, but I seem to be recovering quite well each time. And maybe some of that recovery is more psychological - I’m expecting my body to be more in command, so just act as though it’s going to be fine, and it is.
My digestive health is... mixed. I am trying to eat larger meals and that’s causing me pain and bad reflux issues, including impacting on voice and breathing. On the other hand, I know better how to deal with that, so that’s passing faster and I’m panicking less. Mostly.
Spent two weeks saying how great it is to have my voice back. Woke up today with it as scratchy and painful as before. Send hope, please.— Fay Roberts (@fayroberts) September 17, 2017
Oh well. It still cleared up within a few hours, so that was nice.
Haha. Bedded in? Bedded... Bed. Coz sleep, coz. Yeah. Ahem. Anyway. See you soon!
Wednesday, 17 May 2017
BEEFCAKE!
So, as I mentioned in my previous post, I’m back on the getting-strong trail. Finally. This mostly involves just doing lots of stuff and being active, but also some focused exercises.
For the explicitly (mostly upper-body) strength-building stuff (what I tend to call the “hench mat exercises"), I do press-ups (normal and wide-arm), planks, leg-lifts, and - when I get to that stage - chin-ups.
Once all these are relatively easy, then it’s onto more exciting gym machines, which actually means entering a gym - all these other things I currently do at home.
In the meantime, I also want to get back into free weights but without, you know, injuring myself again in the manner of a muppet. And I’d also like to ensure that I’m making the most of recovery time between exercises by eating the right foods.
So this is also an advice-asking post:
For the explicitly (mostly upper-body) strength-building stuff (what I tend to call the “hench mat exercises"), I do press-ups (normal and wide-arm), planks, leg-lifts, and - when I get to that stage - chin-ups.
Once all these are relatively easy, then it’s onto more exciting gym machines, which actually means entering a gym - all these other things I currently do at home.
In the meantime, I also want to get back into free weights but without, you know, injuring myself again in the manner of a muppet. And I’d also like to ensure that I’m making the most of recovery time between exercises by eating the right foods.
So this is also an advice-asking post:
- What/ where are good resources for finding out about free weight exercises (and advice about actual weights to use) for people who injure themselves easily yet build muscle quickly (or even just the former)?
- What/ where are good resources for finding out about good foods to eat and drinks to drink for recovery after exercise and maximising efficiency of building muscle from exercise? So far my best bet appears to be chicken (high protein but not too heavy on my poor stomach).
(I used to eat protein bars, because they’re convenient and portable and last for ages, but they’ve changed the recipe for the ones I liked (read: the only ones I found that weren’t disgusting/ allergenic) and so I’m kind of scuppered again. I’d be particularly interested in finding some new, non-allergenic (milk: fine; ton of sweetners, nuts, eggs, or chocolate: not fine) protein bars...)
I’ve been doing the Hench Mat Exercises again for a few weeks now. I’ve managed to push through the “But I don’t like it!” stage into “Oh, does today have to be a rest day?!” remarkably quickly, which is something to be happy about. The same thing happened with the bike, which was also gratifying. My main worry now is the perennial “Fay gets cocky and overdoes the exercises so that she injures herself... Again” problem.
Remarkably, I’ve only just thought about recording progress on a spreadsheet, so I can’t tell objectively if I’ve got any more adept, though it feels like I have. I know explicitly that I’m holding my planks for longer (at first I was pleased with 47 seconds (which would sink ignominiously to a bare, shaking 30 towards the end of a session), but now 01:05 is the baseline (can be as much as 01:20 to start, which then sinks to 47 seconds towards the end of a session... or rather: the middle, weirdly, then back up to 01:02). As for number (and quality) of press-ups, etc., I don’t have the data for that, so we’ll have to see...
This rambling post was brought to you by, among other things, a new medication that the specialist is trying me on, which word-suppressing funtimes side-effect is making everything more of a chore when it comes to communication.
Yay.
Monday, 8 May 2017
Back in the Saddle
Blimey. It’s been over a year since I last updated this. So what’s happened in the World of Fay Health & Fitness since then?
- Injured myself at home on the actual day of that event. Foolishly. Luckily, it’s a neck injury I’d had before, so this time I didn’t piss around, got hold of a physiotherapist (my old one having semi-retired), and got into a bunch of new, neck-related exercises.
- After recovering from foolishness, continued to do lots of cycling, but just back on a daily, get-everywhere-I-don’t-need-to-transport-gig-gear/people kind of way.
- Got back into mat exercises - press-ups, crunches, planks - plus the fun addition of chin-ups, courtesy of a bar you can slot above the doorframe (and a stack of books to stand on, because I’m not that tall (despite being tall for a poet), and our house is old, so the ceilings - and therefore doorframes - are high).
- Went to the Edinburgh Fringe in August to take part in the usual shenanigans, which, from a health perspective, involved:
Positives: a bunch of weight-lifting (hauling my crap up six flights of stairs virtually single-handedly as my flatmate had a hernia); walking 2-3 miles/ day up and down a very steep hill (luckily, I lived at the bottom of the hill), sometimes more if I had to go home and change between shows; continuing with the daily physio exercises and the twice-a-week, more hench mat exercises.
Negatives: bad/ little sleep; the usual dehydration and when-the-fuck-do-I-eat issues leading to a little weight loss; abundant and often unnecessary stress (necessary stress I can deal with).
- On the final couple of days had a troubling cough and sore throat, which I powered through on sheer adrenalin and stubbornness, which transmuted into a cold as soon as I started the long drive home through the night.
- Cold turned into a chest infection and laryngitis, and then… and then I couldn’t speak, sing, or anything vocal, couldn’t bend over to pick things up, couldn’t lie down flat, couldn’t eat much, was constantly coughing and had chest pains and stomach pains, and then the bit where my throat kept closing off, stopping my breathing, all of which made sleep difficult.
- I lost a LOT of weight. And no-one seemed to know what was wrong. Everything hurt, everything made me cough, and the only thing I’d ever relied on my whole life - my voice - was gone. And no-one seemed to know beyond a shrug whether it would ever come back.
I pushed on through work, though had a lot of sickness leave, including after a trip to A&E (waking up in the middle of the night entirely unable to breathe and retching mucus) when I was signed off for a couple more weeks after I’d only just got back to work.
As you can imagine, my mental health took a steep and long fucking dive. And even the physio exercises were out for a long time because of the aforementioned not being able to lie down flat, so my joints started to suffer in a major way. I slept (hell: I lived) on the sofa for about three months for fear of waking everyone constantly with the coughing and the terrifying choking noise that happened every time I dropped into proper sleep, even when propped up perpendicularly. It was bad enough that I wasn’t sleeping…
It was horrible. And then there was the (thankfully apparently a clerical error?!) cancer scare.
- Slowly my voice returned to something that was at least audible (though it’s currently fucked again - yay) as I learned what I can eat and not eat (I’m even more limited now than I was before), and which drugs and supplements help and which are, at best, useless.
- They still don’t know what’s wrong, but the latest notion is to put me on a very low dose of something that, at much higher doses (like: fifteen times higher), is used as an anti-depressant.
- I’ve recently got back on the bike. I am still horribly unfit. But I was haemorrhaging money trying to get around town and this is worth it long-term.
- I’m even more recently back on the mat exercises, after I managed to injure myself doing ill-advised free weight-lifting (yes, again) a couple of months ago, and put a crimp in the cycling and some of the physio for a while.
- I’m not living my best life right now, and I think the definition of that is going to have to change, but hey - who needed creative career plans anyway…?
I thought I’d go back to the blog because I actually wanted to ask some dietary advice, but I’ll leave that until the next entry, because it’s a bit much to cram into a catch-up post as well…
Thanks for reading (and, to some of you, waiting so patiently).
Tuesday, 13 October 2015
Steps Forward and Back
So, I'm back on the bike again. What do you mean, you didn't know I was off it...?!
{Checks back catalogue; curses}
Okay, so, it looks like a) I've been somewhat quiet on this front, and b) history repeated itself a bit. Here's what happened over the intervening months since my last post:
1. Cycling every day (pretty much; certainly work days when I didn't have gig gear to carry, and Wednesdays when I had real life people meetings in places).
2. Physio every day (EVERY day; like a BOSS).
3. Mat exercises twice a week (come on!).
4. Eating a balanced diet.
And then August happened. And August has Edinburgh Fringe in it. So no cycling from 19th August onwards, but lots of walking, and a handy new wearable gadget that maps how much and where I walked (because my passive movement tracking app stopped working).
So I scaled Arthur's Seat (yay!) and even coached someone else up it (come on!). Didn't even injure myself, unless you count sunburn. I even kept up my physio and the strength-building mat exercises (despite some logistical difficulties - you try doing crunches on a mat on a polished wooden floor... without sliding across it and into a table).
And then I fell over on my face on a simple walk back down an urban hill, a couple of days later, and lots of health things cascaded, including my one filling jarring free and me getting a lot of pain and then a rubbish temporary filling which didn't let me chew so my nutrition was difficult to maintain and yeah - living off liquid food makes you lose more weight than you're comfortable with, if you're me.
Arse.
And then the trip back from Edinburgh with Too Much Luggage and bad lifting form and behold - buggered wrist.
So I was sensible - cycling hurt my wrist, so I paused on cycling and did some stretching and strengthening exercises for the wrist, and stayed off the press-ups, etc. Then I got back on the bike. Yay! Then I got back into the mat exercises. Now, bear in mind that I hadn't done any since August, because I didn't - I just charged on ahead regardless like someone who was intent on injuring myself. Which I did.
This was 30th September. 1st October I got on the bike, unaware of how much I'd buggered myself. By the time I was heading home, it was clear that what I needed to do was immobilise that joint as much as possible.
It's nice to find that I've learned something. I didn't prevent the injury this time, but I prevented it getting worse. I immobilised as much as possible, asking for help, reducing movement, adjusting everything I could to ensure that as little strain was put upon the joint as possible. (Except on Thursday 8th when I joined in a yoga conversation in work and decided to demonstrate that I shouldn't do a certain move by doing it. 24 hours of migraine-like pain later and I'd learned another lesson about hypermobile injuries.)
So apart from yoga foolishness, I am pretty much recovered (read: it still hurts a bit but I can use it and I was more stressed by not being active) and back on the bike, I cycled to Milton Country Park on Sunday with a friend to do some walking and wittering, then to and from work yesterday and today.
It was somewhat sobering to look back at the previous two blog entries and think: oh, so exactly like 3-4 months ago, huh? I left behind some good advice for myself, though, so that's a blessing.
In preparation for 20th March - Sport Relief again, baby - I'm going to be setting up a plan for increasing activity, strength, endurance, and general fitness. I'll keep you all posted as to what's next...
So, what's the current state of play (physical health-wise), all told? I am still a little hurty in the shoulder-neck joint and in my right wrist, and I'm finding it hard to put the weight back on. (And yes, I've tried eating all the biscuits - all that happened was I felt like crap. Presumably I need to eat a bunch of steaks and cheese. Who knows? All I know is that there are very, very few people out there who want to talk about the problems of losing too much weight and discussing how to put it back on.) So there it is.
{Checks back catalogue; curses}
Okay, so, it looks like a) I've been somewhat quiet on this front, and b) history repeated itself a bit. Here's what happened over the intervening months since my last post:
1. Cycling every day (pretty much; certainly work days when I didn't have gig gear to carry, and Wednesdays when I had real life people meetings in places).
2. Physio every day (EVERY day; like a BOSS).
3. Mat exercises twice a week (come on!).
4. Eating a balanced diet.
And then August happened. And August has Edinburgh Fringe in it. So no cycling from 19th August onwards, but lots of walking, and a handy new wearable gadget that maps how much and where I walked (because my passive movement tracking app stopped working).
So I scaled Arthur's Seat (yay!) and even coached someone else up it (come on!). Didn't even injure myself, unless you count sunburn. I even kept up my physio and the strength-building mat exercises (despite some logistical difficulties - you try doing crunches on a mat on a polished wooden floor... without sliding across it and into a table).
And then I fell over on my face on a simple walk back down an urban hill, a couple of days later, and lots of health things cascaded, including my one filling jarring free and me getting a lot of pain and then a rubbish temporary filling which didn't let me chew so my nutrition was difficult to maintain and yeah - living off liquid food makes you lose more weight than you're comfortable with, if you're me.
Arse.
And then the trip back from Edinburgh with Too Much Luggage and bad lifting form and behold - buggered wrist.
So I was sensible - cycling hurt my wrist, so I paused on cycling and did some stretching and strengthening exercises for the wrist, and stayed off the press-ups, etc. Then I got back on the bike. Yay! Then I got back into the mat exercises. Now, bear in mind that I hadn't done any since August, because I didn't - I just charged on ahead regardless like someone who was intent on injuring myself. Which I did.
This was 30th September. 1st October I got on the bike, unaware of how much I'd buggered myself. By the time I was heading home, it was clear that what I needed to do was immobilise that joint as much as possible.
It's nice to find that I've learned something. I didn't prevent the injury this time, but I prevented it getting worse. I immobilised as much as possible, asking for help, reducing movement, adjusting everything I could to ensure that as little strain was put upon the joint as possible. (Except on Thursday 8th when I joined in a yoga conversation in work and decided to demonstrate that I shouldn't do a certain move by doing it. 24 hours of migraine-like pain later and I'd learned another lesson about hypermobile injuries.)
So apart from yoga foolishness, I am pretty much recovered (read: it still hurts a bit but I can use it and I was more stressed by not being active) and back on the bike, I cycled to Milton Country Park on Sunday with a friend to do some walking and wittering, then to and from work yesterday and today.
It was somewhat sobering to look back at the previous two blog entries and think: oh, so exactly like 3-4 months ago, huh? I left behind some good advice for myself, though, so that's a blessing.
In preparation for 20th March - Sport Relief again, baby - I'm going to be setting up a plan for increasing activity, strength, endurance, and general fitness. I'll keep you all posted as to what's next...
So, what's the current state of play (physical health-wise), all told? I am still a little hurty in the shoulder-neck joint and in my right wrist, and I'm finding it hard to put the weight back on. (And yes, I've tried eating all the biscuits - all that happened was I felt like crap. Presumably I need to eat a bunch of steaks and cheese. Who knows? All I know is that there are very, very few people out there who want to talk about the problems of losing too much weight and discussing how to put it back on.) So there it is.
Tuesday, 23 June 2015
Nyom
I have not been eating well.
Correction: this week I have made a belated stab at eating well. It’s proving... taxing...
I have started monitoring exercise, fluid intake, sleep, and fruit/ veg intake again. Among other things, having an objective measurement is super-useful.
And it turns out that I’m about hitting exercise and sleep targets, scraping by on fluids, and frankly failing at fruit and veg. And, frankly, even those dismal fluid and fruit/ veg intake figures are only because I’m trying harder so that I can have something to put in the log. Less Heisenberg, more Hawthorne.
Balls. I remember that, last time, I was doing really well - easily getting 7/8 fruit and veg a day, and usually drinking about 2½ litres of water (apart from Saturdays - I rarely do well on Saturdays as they tend to be my sofa day - lots of sleep, not so much on the food, drink, or social activity).
Over the last couple of months I appear to have systematically broken all my good habits, possibly in a fit of pique over my neck being sore and it being more difficult for me to exercise. (At some point soon I need to address this thanatopic, adolescent tendency; it’s really starting to get in my way.) I cut down on exercise, social time, water intake, fresh/ any fruit and veg, and I did it with a grim sense of achievement. It was weird. I only see how weird it was now, writing about it and looking back.
I’ve started baking again (creative endeavour, sense of achievement, nom), which means more biscuits. I have to take them out of the house and ply them at colleagues, friends, randoms on the street (this is not actually an exaggeration - I gave home-made flapjack to a homeless guy because I didn’t have any cash on me, and I don’t smoke).
I feel like I’m coming at this health thing again from not even a standing so much as a lying-down start. This is going to be tougher than I’d anticipated...
Any hints and tips would be gratefully received on how to make this stick. In the meantime, I’m going to keep on with the spreadsheet and keep reminding myself how much better I feel well-hydrated and with a less-challenged digestive tract.
(I wish I understood the weight thing - this entire time I’ve continue to remain in the lower half of the ideal BMI range, and - according to the possibly incredibly faulty fat analysis machine - I have a really (like scarily) low fat composition...)
Correction: this week I have made a belated stab at eating well. It’s proving... taxing...
I have started monitoring exercise, fluid intake, sleep, and fruit/ veg intake again. Among other things, having an objective measurement is super-useful.
And it turns out that I’m about hitting exercise and sleep targets, scraping by on fluids, and frankly failing at fruit and veg. And, frankly, even those dismal fluid and fruit/ veg intake figures are only because I’m trying harder so that I can have something to put in the log. Less Heisenberg, more Hawthorne.
Balls. I remember that, last time, I was doing really well - easily getting 7/8 fruit and veg a day, and usually drinking about 2½ litres of water (apart from Saturdays - I rarely do well on Saturdays as they tend to be my sofa day - lots of sleep, not so much on the food, drink, or social activity).
Over the last couple of months I appear to have systematically broken all my good habits, possibly in a fit of pique over my neck being sore and it being more difficult for me to exercise. (At some point soon I need to address this thanatopic, adolescent tendency; it’s really starting to get in my way.) I cut down on exercise, social time, water intake, fresh/ any fruit and veg, and I did it with a grim sense of achievement. It was weird. I only see how weird it was now, writing about it and looking back.
I’ve started baking again (creative endeavour, sense of achievement, nom), which means more biscuits. I have to take them out of the house and ply them at colleagues, friends, randoms on the street (this is not actually an exaggeration - I gave home-made flapjack to a homeless guy because I didn’t have any cash on me, and I don’t smoke).
I feel like I’m coming at this health thing again from not even a standing so much as a lying-down start. This is going to be tougher than I’d anticipated...
Any hints and tips would be gratefully received on how to make this stick. In the meantime, I’m going to keep on with the spreadsheet and keep reminding myself how much better I feel well-hydrated and with a less-challenged digestive tract.
(I wish I understood the weight thing - this entire time I’ve continue to remain in the lower half of the ideal BMI range, and - according to the possibly incredibly faulty fat analysis machine - I have a really (like scarily) low fat composition...)
Wednesday, 9 July 2014
Om nom nom
I spent a couple of hours baking last night - a lot of fun (and quite profitable from a “sweetening IT folk” perspective. ;)) The flapjack and the shortbread biscuits were made in celebration of one of my projects (finally) going right, and they seem to have gone down well.
As mentioned previously, I am an idiot for sweetmeats in biscuit/ flapjack/ pastry form. I am trying to stick to a low-refined-sugar approach to food at the moment, saving it for weekends/ dancing/ celebrations. My joints have been thanking me, which is polite of them... Today has been difficult, though, as I make a mean flapjack. It’s not your dry-as-arse, crumbly pre-packaged flapjack - it’s gooey and sticky and filled with fruit and seeds; you know straight away that it’s all about the sugar and fat - it glistens.
So I’m not going to tell you how to make it on this blog because, well - doesn’t really fit with the title, does it...? I’ve been giving the damned stuff away as fast as I can today, otherwise it’s going to sit next to my desk. Beckoning.
I’m currently trying something that helps me sleep better at night and doesn’t challenge my digestion quite so much: big meal for lunch, salady stuff for dinner. I don’t always manage the salad (sometimes it comes with pizza... or in pizza form... what...?), but my seven-a-day is still going pretty well.
Today I'm going to tell you how to make one of the healthiest things I cook. Variously known as “Fay's Ratatouille”, “That Tomato Sauce Thing” and - most enduringly - “Red Gunk”, my partner swears that Weight Watchers is missing a trick with this one. So here it is:
Dice one medium onion, put in a saucepan with a handful of shredded mushrooms and half a big courgette (or one small one), chopped into quarter-slices, reasonably finely.
Cover (just) with water, add a little salt (unless you don’t want to) and boil on a high heat until everything is soft and a good part of the water is evaporated (10-15 mins max, generally). (Yes I know: denatured vitamins. It’s a sauce, add some raw veggies later...)
Add a tin of chopped tomatoes, stir and heat further, adding herbs and spices to taste (I recommend: garlic (loads), English mustard, black pepper, paprika, ginger, Italian Herbs (basil and oregano especially) (loads).
Move to a lower heat and add at least half a standard tube of tomato purée, stir, and simmer. It’s pretty much ready to eat now, but the longer it simmers gently, the nicer it’ll be.
Works hot on pasta, rice, or potatoes; works cold in sandwiches and on salad. It loves cheese. You can use it to bulk out bolognese and soup, and one of my favourites is to add it to bacon and freshly-wilted spinach in fresh garlic and butter and serve over pasta, but that’s just my taste.
You can also do variations to the basic recipe (I like adding finely-diced carrots, slices of leek, tiny broccoli florets, and celery at the last minute (so it stays crunchy) to the mix, along with an extra half-tin of tomatoes and more tomato purée - this variation is known as “Vegetable Splat”).
High in fibre (and taste – see herbs and spices above), low in fat and sugar, it’s vegan, and good for most allergies except tomatoes/ citric acid.
Bon appétit!
As mentioned previously, I am an idiot for sweetmeats in biscuit/ flapjack/ pastry form. I am trying to stick to a low-refined-sugar approach to food at the moment, saving it for weekends/ dancing/ celebrations. My joints have been thanking me, which is polite of them... Today has been difficult, though, as I make a mean flapjack. It’s not your dry-as-arse, crumbly pre-packaged flapjack - it’s gooey and sticky and filled with fruit and seeds; you know straight away that it’s all about the sugar and fat - it glistens.
So I’m not going to tell you how to make it on this blog because, well - doesn’t really fit with the title, does it...? I’ve been giving the damned stuff away as fast as I can today, otherwise it’s going to sit next to my desk. Beckoning.
I’m currently trying something that helps me sleep better at night and doesn’t challenge my digestion quite so much: big meal for lunch, salady stuff for dinner. I don’t always manage the salad (sometimes it comes with pizza... or in pizza form... what...?), but my seven-a-day is still going pretty well.
Today I'm going to tell you how to make one of the healthiest things I cook. Variously known as “Fay's Ratatouille”, “That Tomato Sauce Thing” and - most enduringly - “Red Gunk”, my partner swears that Weight Watchers is missing a trick with this one. So here it is:
Dice one medium onion, put in a saucepan with a handful of shredded mushrooms and half a big courgette (or one small one), chopped into quarter-slices, reasonably finely.
Cover (just) with water, add a little salt (unless you don’t want to) and boil on a high heat until everything is soft and a good part of the water is evaporated (10-15 mins max, generally). (Yes I know: denatured vitamins. It’s a sauce, add some raw veggies later...)
Add a tin of chopped tomatoes, stir and heat further, adding herbs and spices to taste (I recommend: garlic (loads), English mustard, black pepper, paprika, ginger, Italian Herbs (basil and oregano especially) (loads).
Move to a lower heat and add at least half a standard tube of tomato purée, stir, and simmer. It’s pretty much ready to eat now, but the longer it simmers gently, the nicer it’ll be.
Works hot on pasta, rice, or potatoes; works cold in sandwiches and on salad. It loves cheese. You can use it to bulk out bolognese and soup, and one of my favourites is to add it to bacon and freshly-wilted spinach in fresh garlic and butter and serve over pasta, but that’s just my taste.
You can also do variations to the basic recipe (I like adding finely-diced carrots, slices of leek, tiny broccoli florets, and celery at the last minute (so it stays crunchy) to the mix, along with an extra half-tin of tomatoes and more tomato purée - this variation is known as “Vegetable Splat”).
High in fibre (and taste – see herbs and spices above), low in fat and sugar, it’s vegan, and good for most allergies except tomatoes/ citric acid.
Bon appétit!
Thursday, 8 May 2014
Food, Glorious Food
(Dammit, now I have that song stuck in my head.)
The Spreadsheet Plan is working out well. Disappointingly, it told me that I have to work harder on fruit and veg (thank goodness dried fruit counts - I'd struggle to make it up to 7 most days) and that - as suspected - I'd routinely been drinking not enough water.
It also highlighted that, curiously, I am much better at eating and hydrating well during the work week. I'm guessing this is either to do with the reduced structure during the weekend, or because it's easier to eat vegetables when someone else is cooking them for me. Possibly both... Hmm. The hydration issue, though, is still a little confusing. But I'll come up with a plan for combating that and then we'll see...! :D
As part of this Back on the Wagon programme, I've been trying to identify my weaknesses and eliminate them. I have come to the conclusion that there's one thing in my life in particular which can topple all sorts of good intentions and excellent plans in a single bound.
To put it bluntly: I'm a cretin for biscuits*. They are my Kryptonite. I don't really eat many sweets; I'm "meh" about savoury fatty food (I definitely know when to stop, and do). I'm virtually teetotal, and am generally pretty straight-edge. I can only put my utter inability to resist biscuits* down to:
So what have I been doing about this?
To start off, in my own, fumbling, amateur way, I've been following my "good" instincts (i.e. listening to my body, rather than following "damaging" cravings). I'm pretty sure that I know fine well when I'm doing things wrong through indolence/ a desire to passively hurt myself (yay depression and a fragile body - why self-harm when you can self-neglect?!), so I'm having to come up with ways around these thanatopic tendencies.
One thing I'd worked out was that if I allow myself to become too hungry (to the point where even waiting to cook/ the actual act of doing cooking seems like a massive drain on perceived low resources) I will snack like a mofo. If I structure my eating a little better, I can resist snacking.
Well... resist snacking crap, anyway. I'm allowing myself dried fruit mid-morning and mid-afternoon at work, eating a carby lunch, and trying for a light meal in the evening which is strong on vegetables and protein, but low on carbs.
My lifestyle is problematic, and some of it can't really be switched up without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I perform, using my voice. There appears to need to be quite a gap of time between eating satisfying (fatty, carby, proteiny) foods and singing/ speaking well. As most performances tend to be in the evening, around the time you'd be wanting to eat sensibly, juggling all these things can be an arse. Also: the satisfying food that's available when the show has finished and you're on your way home tends to the unhealthy (to say the least). And see above - by the time I'm in a position to eat I'm pretty hungry and tired, and also starting an adrenalin come-down, so prone to seeking something that feels like an energy (or mood) -boost.
So what are biscuits substituting for? They're not exactly something that our bodies have adapted to draw nutritional substance from. They're eaten because they're nice, a treat. They're eaten because a sugar-rush can be a compelling high; because they remind us of childhood (with the extra benefit of no-one telling us we can't eat too many now we're grown-up); because we associate sugary foods with the end of the meal when we're relaxed and happy after a good time with family/ friends; because biscuitry is a reliable standby of feeling good and filling us, unlike people or job or creativity; because we're tired and have overridden the command to sleep, so need something else to fill the energy void; because we're not great at working out what it is we're missing and we know we like biscuits; because they're convenient and they keep for ages in desk drawers and vending machines and bags and cupboards and pockets; because it's just an ickle biccie...
So I need to get better at working out what "I want a biscuit" means in each context and then acting on that, rather than ignoring or repressing that urge. Sleep, water, attention, stimulation, sex, affirmation, nostalgia, low blood sugar... these needs can all be dealt with in other ways.
In other words: I need to make new habits, tread new patterns into my brain (like "walk rather than wait" or "bus rather than taxi" or "bike rather than bus" or sleep rather than social media") as I replace "biscuit" with better sources of satisfaction.
No short order. But I've done it before - let's see if I can do it this time so it sticks better.
The Spreadsheet Plan is working out well. Disappointingly, it told me that I have to work harder on fruit and veg (thank goodness dried fruit counts - I'd struggle to make it up to 7 most days) and that - as suspected - I'd routinely been drinking not enough water.
It also highlighted that, curiously, I am much better at eating and hydrating well during the work week. I'm guessing this is either to do with the reduced structure during the weekend, or because it's easier to eat vegetables when someone else is cooking them for me. Possibly both... Hmm. The hydration issue, though, is still a little confusing. But I'll come up with a plan for combating that and then we'll see...! :D
As part of this Back on the Wagon programme, I've been trying to identify my weaknesses and eliminate them. I have come to the conclusion that there's one thing in my life in particular which can topple all sorts of good intentions and excellent plans in a single bound.
To put it bluntly: I'm a cretin for biscuits*. They are my Kryptonite. I don't really eat many sweets; I'm "meh" about savoury fatty food (I definitely know when to stop, and do). I'm virtually teetotal, and am generally pretty straight-edge. I can only put my utter inability to resist biscuits* down to:
- That thing about foods which combine both sugar and fat (which pretty much never happens in nature, so we have few inborn mechanisms for recognising satiation from processed foods which combine them like this, apparently) being so addictive.
- Me being encouraged to snack on (a strictly limited number of) biscuits* every day at about 4:30pm as a child (i.e. after school but before dinner... possibly because my mother wanted us not to be hungry as she preferred us to all eat together - i.e. so that she only had to cook one meal).
- My allergies meaning that many other sweet treats of choice are not an option (anything containing chocolate, nuts or eggs, which means no cakes, among other things), so biscuits* are pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to convenient processed snackery.
So what have I been doing about this?
To start off, in my own, fumbling, amateur way, I've been following my "good" instincts (i.e. listening to my body, rather than following "damaging" cravings). I'm pretty sure that I know fine well when I'm doing things wrong through indolence/ a desire to passively hurt myself (yay depression and a fragile body - why self-harm when you can self-neglect?!), so I'm having to come up with ways around these thanatopic tendencies.
One thing I'd worked out was that if I allow myself to become too hungry (to the point where even waiting to cook/ the actual act of doing cooking seems like a massive drain on perceived low resources) I will snack like a mofo. If I structure my eating a little better, I can resist snacking.
Well... resist snacking crap, anyway. I'm allowing myself dried fruit mid-morning and mid-afternoon at work, eating a carby lunch, and trying for a light meal in the evening which is strong on vegetables and protein, but low on carbs.
My lifestyle is problematic, and some of it can't really be switched up without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I perform, using my voice. There appears to need to be quite a gap of time between eating satisfying (fatty, carby, proteiny) foods and singing/ speaking well. As most performances tend to be in the evening, around the time you'd be wanting to eat sensibly, juggling all these things can be an arse. Also: the satisfying food that's available when the show has finished and you're on your way home tends to the unhealthy (to say the least). And see above - by the time I'm in a position to eat I'm pretty hungry and tired, and also starting an adrenalin come-down, so prone to seeking something that feels like an energy (or mood) -boost.
So what are biscuits substituting for? They're not exactly something that our bodies have adapted to draw nutritional substance from. They're eaten because they're nice, a treat. They're eaten because a sugar-rush can be a compelling high; because they remind us of childhood (with the extra benefit of no-one telling us we can't eat too many now we're grown-up); because we associate sugary foods with the end of the meal when we're relaxed and happy after a good time with family/ friends; because biscuitry is a reliable standby of feeling good and filling us, unlike people or job or creativity; because we're tired and have overridden the command to sleep, so need something else to fill the energy void; because we're not great at working out what it is we're missing and we know we like biscuits; because they're convenient and they keep for ages in desk drawers and vending machines and bags and cupboards and pockets; because it's just an ickle biccie...
So I need to get better at working out what "I want a biscuit" means in each context and then acting on that, rather than ignoring or repressing that urge. Sleep, water, attention, stimulation, sex, affirmation, nostalgia, low blood sugar... these needs can all be dealt with in other ways.
In other words: I need to make new habits, tread new patterns into my brain (like "walk rather than wait" or "bus rather than taxi" or "bike rather than bus" or sleep rather than social media") as I replace "biscuit" with better sources of satisfaction.
No short order. But I've done it before - let's see if I can do it this time so it sticks better.
Monday, 24 March 2014
The Aftermath
This needs to be made clear - I am very happy right now. Okay, it's my birthday and the sun has been shining its arse off in crisp, blowy weather - exactly how I like it. Okay, I now have an actual window seat in work that overlooks anything other than a grimy roof. Okay, I've helped Sport Relief to raise nearly £1000...
But I'm knackered, and constantly hungry - like persistently starving hungry today. And there is no musculoskeletal part of my lower body that does not ache, that doesn't stiffen into vicious immobility if I sit a bit wrong for longer than a few breaths.
And yet.
And yet I can't stop smiling. And yet I'm not being a total sap either - if people come to me with unnecessarily annoying bullshit, I politely, smilingly, do not take it. And yet everything feels like something either small, or fun, or a challenge I am looking forward to spanking. And, despite feeling pretty fuzzy in the head, at the same time it's like I'm seeing people very clearly.
If I stop, I'll fall over. I'm quite sure of that and am looking forward to it immensely. The six hours' sleep I had this morning were some of the best I've had in a long time.
How did I do? Well, I got all the way around (and around) Milton Country Park just fine, ta. The track turned out to be 1.45 miles long, which made calculating difficult. (It also adds a new perspective to the "struggled 1 mile two years ago" thing, now I come to think of it; it was nearly 50% longer!) I had some company along the way after all (possibly because I'd said before that I probably wouldn't), which was particularly heroic on their part as both of them had done the 5km swim the day before. Ellie ducked out after 3 goes round (fair enough with an undisclosed chipped ankle!) and Emma trudged on with me for another revolution, a swift sit-down, and a sneaky wriggle up the middle of the circuit, so that we ended up doing 6.25 miles (according to Google Tracks) in total. It took just under 2 hours, what with the pausing to take photos, the pausing to let actual runners past (and cheer them on), the toilet break, and the aforementioned swift sit-down (long enough to do me good, not long enough to get stuck).
(And then I had to drive home, via Emma's house, wrestle the car seats back up (buggering my neck/ shoulder again - a shame), tidy and clean the house, pack the car, drive to the venue, take part in a poetry workshop, watch other people insist on setting up the space (:D), run a show, pack up, take crew and features home, chat a lot of interesting stuff about poetry and accents and poets and language and training and poets and accents and women and poets and PhDs and poets and accents and dear God 1am, hi there...
Long day.)
How'm I doing physically?
Well, my knees are surprisingly buoyant - certainly no worse than they've been in the past due to prolonged standing (which, if you remember, I did a fair amount of on Saturday), and do not appear to be swollen, which is nice. :) Similarly, the soles of my feet are uncomplaining. However, my ankles are surprisingly achey (this may well have been to do with the constantly-changing, bumpy, humpy, muddy, potholed terrain) and my lower back is disappointingly sore. The most surprising set of aches is in my abdominal muscles - kind of interesting... And I want to eat everything. All of it.
What went well?
The time spent on the walk was good - could have been shorter, but maybe it wouldn't have been if I'd pushed faster earlier... I didn't start to feel the walk badly in my legs until about 4-5 miles in, and then pushed through the remaining distance. I did rest when I really, really needed to. I didn't run out of puff. The distraction of friends helped even more than I would have thought possible. I hydrated well (knowing that I would have somewhere to go if I'd hydrated too well!), and fuelled myself with morning porridge. I did my physio beforehand, but had rested generally, doing no weight-bearing exercise, the whole week before. And I was assertive about not standing throughout the concert the evening before, and tried my best to eat and drink well (lots of (particularly raw) vegetables, high fibre, as little refined sugar as possible, loads of water) during the week.
Oh, and I raised a bundle of cash. If you've not sponsored, you can do so at http://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/fayroberts :)
What could have been better?
Well, controversially, I think I could have done with some non-weight-bearing but vigorous exercise in the preceding week. If when I do this kind of thing again, I think I'll benefit from the rush of achievement of vigorous exercise in the run-up to something scary like this, as well as keeping up momentum on happy muscles and good bloodflow. While I stood up less than I could have done the night before, I still did a lot of standing, and my sleep levels were rubbish that week (another case for more aerobic exercise?!). Also: while I rallied towards the end of the week, my diet wasn't exactly stellar during the preceding few days.
What next? Well, firstly I need to see how the recovery actually goes (update 25-Mar-14 - my knees are actually starting to hurt quite badly now; bugger), and I want to know more about this next-day euphoria and confidence. Have you run a (half-)marathon or 10k? Climbed a massive hill? Cycled to France or something? Is it like this? Or should I be looking at some other factors? Like the sleep deprivation, for example. Because yesterday was brilliant, and I feel like I could do with more of that, if my knees can survive it. And I need another challenge - another milestone on this path of Being Fitter. Any suggestions gratefully received, and I'm going to get some instruction from the gym in a few weeks' time, once I'm back in the mode, asking for some extra goals...
So thanks for the props, everyone, and yes: this blog will go on (though perhaps less frequently until I have a new Big Goal) as I continue to chart my relationship with my body, fitness, pain, and recovery...
Monday, 17 February 2014
Bleh
Today is a Bad Joints Day. Not only the usual suspects: Borked Shoulder, Particularly Bad Knee, Grinchy Neck Section, Dodgy Wrist, and Whingey Lower Back, but pretty much everything else as well. The knees feel swollen, and everything is particularly clicky, achey, or twisted.
Yay. No gym for me tonight. This, combined with general increase in clumsiness and fine motor control near-absence today and yesterday leads me to conclude several things:
1. Sleep deprivation is a major key in pain perception/ management
Sleep has been very absent lately, especially over the last two nights.
2. I need to drink more on busy days
Like way more.
3. I have entered the "secretory" phase of my menstrual cycle
O hai progesterone, come to make a fuss, have you?
4. Standing around lots really does knacker my knees, especially when carrying heavy stuff
Seriously.
5. There may be some other factor that I'm not figuring in that is pulling everything else out of alignment
e.g. diet (sugar? acid? protein? calcium? something else?), the actual weight carried while walking/ standing, emotional stress, etc.
One of the things that worries me about, well, all of the above, is that the weekend of The Walk is a busy one, and that's got some real implications for stamina/ injury/ enjoyment on the day and recovery afterwards.
The day/ evening beforehand is a choir concert. Judging by last time, this means: lots of standing; not much fluid intake (you don't want to rush to the loo in the middle of the gig); and a late night finish, which includes eating late. Boo.
On the evening of the the day itself is a poetry gig that I run. Judging by, well, every time, this means: a fair amount of standing; lots of heavy lifting (including up and down stairs); not much fluid intake (as organiser, you find yourself forgetting); and a really late night finish, which includes eating late. Double-boo.
And both will involve a fair amount of emotional stress, of different types, as well as likely to be taking place during the same less-than-ideal phase of my menstrual cycle.
Oh dear.
The Big Day is five weeks away and I have, as yet, to do any of the long walks necessary to check my ability to walk the increasingly long distances on the graph on the way up to six whole miles. I just typed the phrase "Things keep getting in the way." and looked at it in disappointment and a measure of horror.
Oh deary me.
So the next five weeks are going to see:
1. A new sleep strategy (and set of tactics to match)
Don't ask me yet - I need to work this out.
2. A dry run of "drinking more and standing around less" for the next poetry event
Can't hurt...
3. More physio advice
She offered something I was tempted to take her up on. Now that looks like a Very Good Idea Indeed™
4. Cracking on with the nutritionist advice
Any suggestions for good ones in Cambridge?
5. A new mattress
Mine is completely scuppered; time to spend some money.
6. Actually doing a long walk
No excuses.
7. Reading up more on hypermobility
There must be more I could be doing that I haven't thought of yet...
So watch this space, basically.
Yay. No gym for me tonight. This, combined with general increase in clumsiness and fine motor control near-absence today and yesterday leads me to conclude several things:
1. Sleep deprivation is a major key in pain perception/ management
Sleep has been very absent lately, especially over the last two nights.
2. I need to drink more on busy days
Like way more.
3. I have entered the "secretory" phase of my menstrual cycle
O hai progesterone, come to make a fuss, have you?
4. Standing around lots really does knacker my knees, especially when carrying heavy stuff
Seriously.
5. There may be some other factor that I'm not figuring in that is pulling everything else out of alignment
e.g. diet (sugar? acid? protein? calcium? something else?), the actual weight carried while walking/ standing, emotional stress, etc.
One of the things that worries me about, well, all of the above, is that the weekend of The Walk is a busy one, and that's got some real implications for stamina/ injury/ enjoyment on the day and recovery afterwards.
The day/ evening beforehand is a choir concert. Judging by last time, this means: lots of standing; not much fluid intake (you don't want to rush to the loo in the middle of the gig); and a late night finish, which includes eating late. Boo.
On the evening of the the day itself is a poetry gig that I run. Judging by, well, every time, this means: a fair amount of standing; lots of heavy lifting (including up and down stairs); not much fluid intake (as organiser, you find yourself forgetting); and a really late night finish, which includes eating late. Double-boo.
And both will involve a fair amount of emotional stress, of different types, as well as likely to be taking place during the same less-than-ideal phase of my menstrual cycle.
Oh dear.
The Big Day is five weeks away and I have, as yet, to do any of the long walks necessary to check my ability to walk the increasingly long distances on the graph on the way up to six whole miles. I just typed the phrase "Things keep getting in the way." and looked at it in disappointment and a measure of horror.
Oh deary me.
So the next five weeks are going to see:
1. A new sleep strategy (and set of tactics to match)
Don't ask me yet - I need to work this out.
2. A dry run of "drinking more and standing around less" for the next poetry event
Can't hurt...
3. More physio advice
She offered something I was tempted to take her up on. Now that looks like a Very Good Idea Indeed™
4. Cracking on with the nutritionist advice
Any suggestions for good ones in Cambridge?
5. A new mattress
Mine is completely scuppered; time to spend some money.
6. Actually doing a long walk
No excuses.
7. Reading up more on hypermobility
There must be more I could be doing that I haven't thought of yet...
So watch this space, basically.
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Back on the Wagon
In the end, I had five days with no other exercise but walking, and even then not much. I'm disappointed, if truth be told - while I chose wisely not to for the first three days, the other two were littered with excuses and bad planning.
Oh well; changing patterns of thought are unlikely to happen overnight. I shall look on this as a learning opportunity...
In other, more positive news: I got back into things while staying over at my family's at the weekend, and felt the better for it, though my abs kept saying really?! I missed the chance to get a long walk in, though, which was a shame, but visiting my mum's grave with my dad (the first time we've done that, it suddenly occurs to me, since her funeral in '99) took precedence.
Anyway, a week later than anticipated (planned, that is), I went for the "Walk all the way home after work" goal. Some numbers for the stats heads, according to my Google Tracks app:
Distance: 2.6 miles
Putative Calories Burned: 273
Total Time: 41:40
Average Speed: 3.74 mph
(There's all sorts of stuff about moving time and average moving speed, which seems confusing to me, but hey...)
All of which is rather positive, I think. Good speed, didn't stop for any significant amount of time except at a pedestrian crossing, during which I kept my legs wiggling, like a very slow, over-dressed jogger. I didn't hurt too much during the walk itself, and I even stretched out when I got home.
Today my legs are so very far from fussed I'd almost forgotten I'd done it. Well, I say that. They weren't during the day, but now they're grumbling, especially in the knees, and I can't help but wonder if 2.6 miles at a fast trot followed by fairly intensive sessions on the stationary bicycles the next day was entirely wise.
Heigh-ho. You'll be wanting a progress report then?
Diet (as opposed to dieting)
I'm eating well, enjoying food, and stubbornly substituting dried fruit and more water for biscuits and flapjack. Tonight I sat there, in our currently freezing kitchen, after an extremely satisfying meal of home-made stew with potatoes and fresh bread, and wondered what was wrong. I started externalising the conversation I was having sotto metis in my head to highlight to myself how ludicrous it was:
"But I want a biscuit."
"You've eaten more than enough, you're just tired."
"Biscuits! I can see them!"
"Sorry - no biscuits for you..." etc. It seemed to work.
(Although I'd quite like a biscuit right about now. Maybe I'll go to sleep instead.)
Sleep
I've got to do something about this. I'm more tired from physical exertion, so my sleep quality's better, I just need to work on the quantity. Dammit.
Physio
Apart from the blip (it was a blip!) that was last week, doing well on this score. It's getting a tad easy, though, which means that, presumably, I run the risk of getting bored by it and not doing it. Doing it first thing in the morning keeps it more difficult (laxer muscles to overcome), and I can do that time-wasting reading the news thing that I would usually do slumped on the sofa when I arguably should be getting ready for work...
Mat exercises
Going very well. 20 reps is almost easy now, and my planks (even the repeated ones in later sets) are more reliably 60 seconds (or close) at a time. So I've started adding in some new ones (wide-arm press-ups! Yay! Holy damn that's difficult!), and will continue to do so (I foresee flying press-ups - where you swing one arm up at a time after coming back up - scissor kicks, and - in a month or so's time I suppose - gym ball gubbins; that'll keep me occupied...)
Gym
I failed to consider that doing longer sets of the endurance stuff (bikes, rowing machine, etc.) would mean that I spend longer overall at the gym. That tiny miscalculation (and missed bus) aside, this is going pretty well too.
Up to 16.5 minutes on the bikes (the magical 20 minutes is almost within sight!), with variations of difficulty to - again - keep me from getting bored and doing it wrong. I'm also listening to music and reading the Kindle app on the phone during the "flat" stretches. And watching the man who does Epic Lunges down the length of the cardio part of the gym. Luckily, I am too breathless, generally, to shout "Why so serious?!"
Maximum reps on the free weights is starting to get easy. I think next week I go up a whole 0.5kg! Onto the Big Girl Weights, where they have textured chrome bars and black hexagonal ends! Yay! :D
I'd forgotten how ace rowing machines are. I'd also forgotten that people are as crap at putting the handles back to the right slot for the next person as they are re-stacking their weights.
Oh hell - I'm turning into a gym bore!
No, no, it's okay - I'm allowed/ supposed to on here.
I saw a lot more people that I know in the gym today. Tuesday appears to be People Fay Knows Day at that particular grunt emporium.
And no, I still haven't got used to the guttural gasps emitted by men with weights, the higher-pitched, sobbing exhalations of women at the end of their sets. This, I have decided, is why people wear earphones - not to distract themselves from the boredom of repetitive exercise, not to dedicate themselves to their fitness in aural isolation, but to prevent themselves from getting needlessly aroused by the sounds of the others around them.
There's a poem in that, I'll wager...
And that's it, I reckon. This weekend I'll need to walk 3.5 miles to be up to the mark; I'll let you know how that goes!
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
Confessions #1
I am a MASSIVE nerd. I think we suspected this already, but come on: who else do you know would decide to chart their menstrual cycle in a spreadsheet and then apply an algorithm to give predictions of the better days to exercise over the course of the weeks in order to draw a graph of this.
An uncle-flipping* GRAPH.
I'm monitoring a lot of things on this project; even I feel that this might be getting a little weird. I was monitoring protein intake, but gave that up really quickly because, well, it was a bit dull, to tell the truth, and the answer to my previous conundrum (am I eating too much protein because I can't eat pulses, nuts, eggs, and fish?) appeared to be: "probably not" (there seems to be little but rough consensus on absolute figures and a huge range of what "right" is, and the potential side effects of too much - anywhere from "nothing" to "meh" to "heart disease" to "OMG crumbling bones!"), apart from beef days, which I already knew.
However, the revelation that my waist-to-hip ratio leaves more to be desired than you might think (though this depends on: time of day measured, muscle tension, and which ratio scales of "you're doomed!" you believe) has me thinking that, despite earlier protestations, maybe I should be measuring calorie intake.
I really don't want to.
- DULL.
- Admitting that (again, depending which Doom Scale you believe) I'm closer to "overweight" than I'm comfortable with believing.
- Painful and difficult.
- Calorie-counting is what people on a diet do, and I'm not on a diet.
Am I?
And if I was, so what? Hmm...
My mother was always on some diet or other and miserable about it. She constantly felt uncomfortable about her weight and some days it seemed she felt like her very skin didn't fit right - she didn't even like her hair (until after it started to grow back after the chemo and we begged her to leave it alone and let it curl naturally). I only have a few photos of her. Among other things, my memories are of a slightly overweight, slightly-shorter-than-me woman with a wicked sense of humour, a beautiful voice, and a lot of regrets. Presumably, at some level, I associate calorie-counting dieting with a fundamental lack of liking for yourself. Oddly enough, at other levels, I also associate it with a fundamental respect for and desire for a healthy amount of agency for yourself. I guess it depends on who's doing the dieting, how, and why. Maybe it's fine for everyone but me. (Seriously?!)
I wonder, of course, if me striving to overcome the screwed-up joints (a clear legacy from a man with a double-jointed digit or two and a woman whose joints constantly pained her, sometimes to a crippling degree), to gain muscle definition, and compensate for my low-movement lifestyle is a symptom of a degree of dissatisfaction with who I am. I don't think so. It doesn't feel so much like trying to change myself into something else as uncovering a self I've neglected for a while, whipping the dust-sheet off a still-serviceable piece of old furniture**.
And if I was, so what? Hmm...
My mother was always on some diet or other and miserable about it. She constantly felt uncomfortable about her weight and some days it seemed she felt like her very skin didn't fit right - she didn't even like her hair (until after it started to grow back after the chemo and we begged her to leave it alone and let it curl naturally). I only have a few photos of her. Among other things, my memories are of a slightly overweight, slightly-shorter-than-me woman with a wicked sense of humour, a beautiful voice, and a lot of regrets. Presumably, at some level, I associate calorie-counting dieting with a fundamental lack of liking for yourself. Oddly enough, at other levels, I also associate it with a fundamental respect for and desire for a healthy amount of agency for yourself. I guess it depends on who's doing the dieting, how, and why. Maybe it's fine for everyone but me. (Seriously?!)
I wonder, of course, if me striving to overcome the screwed-up joints (a clear legacy from a man with a double-jointed digit or two and a woman whose joints constantly pained her, sometimes to a crippling degree), to gain muscle definition, and compensate for my low-movement lifestyle is a symptom of a degree of dissatisfaction with who I am. I don't think so. It doesn't feel so much like trying to change myself into something else as uncovering a self I've neglected for a while, whipping the dust-sheet off a still-serviceable piece of old furniture**.
Or I'm protesting too much.
Anyway, for the moment I'm not going to count calories, if for no other reason than that my heart just sinks at the notion, and right now - trying to take something positive from the fact that I'm bleeding too heavily to exercise (like the discovery that I've already got to the point where I miss actually exercising when I can't, and distraction in the form of the creation of a menstrual exercise algorithm, for goodness' sake!) - I can do with all the motivation I can get. I am, however, going to cut down even further on refined sugar***, and see where that gets me... :)
______________________
* Not swearing is pretty hard, but I'm going to give it a go for this blog, in case certain folk**** are actually reading this. Hello!
** I'm not that posh - it was just a mental image
*** Oddly, that does sound rather like a diet... {facepalm}
___________
**** Putative delicate readers who, for some reason, I'm happy to allow to read talk of my menses... curious...
Saturday, 25 January 2014
Progress
Not quite sure what to say here. Have avoided this so far, but this is one of the stated reasons for having the blog - a record of effects, so have at it. Behold a mixture of facts and feels.
Timetable
I have one now, and so far I haven't cheated. It's only been a couple of days now, mind. Basically, I have to treat exercise (physio, strength-builders like press-ups, etc., and gym) as an entity like gigs or arts admin meetings or dates or stuff, only the main difference being that I can move them without asking anyone else. And that's move, not cancel. I try to make sure there's at least one rest day per week in the mix (and some of the other days are physio-only).
Let's see how that goes. I've learned from tonight's experience that I can do a day's work, go to the gym for a short but thorough workout, and drive a 100-mile trip round a gig without dying. I wonder what tomorrow will bring!
Physio
This is going well, and I'm building back in some of the weird micro-muscle exercises I can do in my chair at work as well. Doing 15-20 mins of mat-physio in the morning does seem to make me feel more energised. It does, however, need to be timetabled with real discipline, mind...
I'm up to the proper number of reps for everything, and it's neither a burden nor a literal pain at the moment.
Gym
Gymnasia are weird places, no? What the...? Yeah. So re-calibrating my weirdness scale again to fit gyms in is proving interesting.
I've worked out how to make the stationary bikes do stuff that works for me and doesn't make me frustratedly confused. This is good. I'm up to a whopping 13.5 minutes (oooh) on each type of bike (beginning and end of the workout) at around level 8 (whatever the hell that means), and the time doesn't drag.
Much. I did have to start reading on my phone for the final 5 minutes of the second set. I should look out my Kindle - that worked well last time around, in the gym I understood.
This gym is shiny and doesn't have thick, slightly manky mats on which I could stretch and do floor exercises like the old one. It also has an alarming number (one so far, but where are the rest?!) of work colleagues in it. And there's a hot tub on a fire escape. I don't even...
Okay. Right. I'm using 2kg weights for the free weight exercises - up to 20 reps for the "easy" ones, and 15 for the "people with a screwed-up shoulder probably shouldn't... fine..." ones. I'm doing a mix of biceps and triceps and I have to try hard not to smile encouragingly/ snigger at the other people with (much bigger) weights. (Listen, if you look at me out of the corner of your eye while mashing big lumps of metal around and grunting, I have to assume that you want me to pay attention and validate you somehow.)
I'll switch up weight and down reps when 15 and 20 get easy. They have 2.5kg weights. They're barely used...
My arms don't burn like they did at first; the final five reps of any set are a lot less Sisyphean than they were last week.
Rowing machines are fun! :D Especially when you remember that time your partner taught you how to row properly on one of these things. 800+m in 5 mins? Something like that... More next week, and to think I only got on it because someone was using the chest press.
Up to 14kg on the chest press - two sets of 15-ish reps (second set always shorter than the first). Starting to come to the conclusion that either all chest press machines are wonky in the same way, or I actually have one arm shorter than the other.
Strength exercises
Up to 20 on press-ups, 15 on leg-raises (old injury I'm being careful of), and 60s on front plank (get in!). I do four sets and the reps/ holds definitely vary after the first one.
How does it make you feel?
Chuffed, really. My top pulse rate appears to have reduced on the bikes, the weight reps are solid, I haven't injured myself yet, and it feels like progress.
And how does that make you feeeel?
I definitely feel more confident and more present in my body (as opposed to disconnected/ avoiding sensations from). I'm not exactly free of pain at the moment, but I seem to be less bothered about it - it's just information.
I tend to start to groan when I pull myself up from sitting, then realise that's not that painful. In fact I've only just realised this week how much I move through the world as though in expectation of pain. It would be good to stop that.
Dietary Stuff
Drinking more water is brilliant! And it turns out I was already pretty good at getting five a day. But pushing it more is good. Eating more raw vegs always gives me this weird sensation of a light belly (no, not hungry!) after a few days of putting the effort in.
And I'm therefore eating fewer snacks as there's no room for them.
Right. I'm.crashing. See you soon!
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