Target Practice

Well, it’s been nearly two weeks since my last update, packed full of goals as it was. What’s occurring?

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:

• 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.

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!

Preprandial Perambulation

So, as I said before, I’m keen to expand on my fitness activities now that I’m back at work (sedentary as hell) and no longer charging up and down hills and up and down several flights of stairs every day.

So new strategies for worktime fitness include:

1. Stairs

I currently work on the third floor, and am no longer choking horribly like I was this time last year (for AGES), so if I can go up and down the stairs to/ from the Edinburgh flat, I can do that at work. (Last year I was so ill that even going down stairs made me cough and choke. I got really reliant on the lift; I’m trying to kick that habit.)

Sometimes I go up two stairs at a time, then stand and gasp at my desk while I wait for my heart-rate and blood pressure to return to something approaching not-having-a-stroke. Two of my geographically close colleagues are so much fitter than me it’s not even funny, but they’re polite about me doing my landed-fish impression.

Useful for: leg strength, heart strength.

Disadvantage: makes me look a little antisocial at times when others are using the lift...

Goal: not to be out-of-breath after doing the full three flights.
 
 
2. Lunchtime walks

I work very near a patch of land in Cambridge that is approximately 0.65 miles in circumference - Parker’s Piece. It seems ridiculous to only step outside my building before home time when I have an errand in town that can’t wait until after 6pm. So, instead of sitting looking at t’internet the whole time, I figure I’ll step out and do a brisk turn around the Piece before eating lunch. Except that that’s a bit boring and not exactly very long. So I’ve worked out this more complex criss-crossing route that takes the walk up to about 1.7 miles and 36 minutes (including getting to and from the office building), making maximum use of the greenness and relative-lack-of-cars-ness.

Wacky Saltire/ Wobbly Kite - movement map courtesy of Strava

No doubt I’ll get bored with it after a while, but there’s a great deal less pollution and dodging people than if I walked in any other direction from my office. And I’m not going to just walk up and down the stairs. No-one wants that. I’ve invited other people along generally; let’s see...

Did it for the first time today, and here are the results:

I overheated so much... - stats courtesy of Fitbit

Short of actually jogging, I think I’m unlikely to get any better than that. And I’m not jogging for anyone - my knees are shot enough as it is.

Useful for: general fitness maintenance, leg strength, heart strength, getting away from screens and chairs, encouraging a good appetite for lunch.

Disadvantage: I’m struggling here, because anything I think of is tiny. Okay, let’s say that it’s dependent on weather, and in splashier months the choice of bike-ridden paths/ car-ridden Regent’s Terrace and muddy ground may prove tricksy.

Goals: Maintain a pattern of doing it every work lunchtime that it’s not horrendous weather for six weeks; bring it down to a 30 minute time by the Solstice.
 
 
3. Isometrics

About 50,000,000 years ago I was shown some isometric exercises (though she didn’t call it that) for my shoulders by my old physio. They were supposed to work on the small, stabilising muscles closer to the bone, to help prevent injury. Like everyone in the history of rehabilitation ever, I stopped doing the boring exercises when I felt like I was feeling better.

{sigh}

I have rigorously trained myself to do the big-muscle daily physio exercises every day, between waking up and breakfast. I’ve only missed one in the last few months or so, and that’s because I was full of snot and coughing like a pit pony. I need to get into a similar pattern with the isometrics, and frankly it’s ridiculous that I’m not because I don’t even need to get out of my chair to do them! So the notion is to have at least one time in the working day where I do them.  I’ve decided that it’s towards the end, when my colleague who sits next to the big window has gone home so I can walk over, rest my eyes on the distant view of the far side of Parker’s Piece and just bloody do my exercises already. It takes 2:45 minutes, so I’m not entirely sure why I don’t do ’em! :)

Useful for: much-needed shoulder stability, better posture.

Disadvantage: honestly, mate, there really isn’t one; you could even do it in the loo if you’re worried about people thinking you look weird doing it!

Goals: Maintain a pattern of doing it at least once a day every day (work or otherwise) for six weeks.
 
 
Thoughts? What fitness habits do you incorporate into your workday?

I Want More...

TL;DR - a month running around a hilly city has done me a world of good, and now I’m back at my sedentary day job I want to do more, including trying Fitstar - any recommendations?

I have spent 3½ weeks in Edinburgh walking up and down hills (apart from that bit in the last week where some fucker sneezed on me and I came down with a roaring cold that saw me have to get a replacement host for the last few days of my shows), hauling a heavy suitcase full of publicity materials, and repeatedly going up and down the three (four?) flights of stairs to reach our overpriced flat.

I was surprised to find that I got my “Fringe legs” under me faster than anticipated, and was able to do things like walking 1.75 miles uphill, slaloming tourists and flyerers alike, in just over 35 minutes, ending up on site overheating but able to speak (i.e. only slightly breathless).

Spot the day when I left my Fitbit on charge and the days I took off sick latterly...

I got back on the bike this morning for work and was pleasantly surprised to find that the fitness extended to this too. All this striding about, laden and at speed, has done wonders for my cardiac and aerobic fitness.



In short: wahoo! :D

But now I want to push that a bit further and find ways to exercise around job and performance commitments, because being this much fitter is fun - I have honestly missed being able to rely on my body this much, and I am really keen to maintain/ develop that. Turns out it’s easier when it’s part of my life (and saving money) than when I have to make a special effort aside to do it. I’m going to start taking fast walks at lunchtimes for a start, and I’m thinking about expanding my use of Fitbit into their Fitstar programme. Have any of you tried the latter - is it just nonsense or is it genuinely helpful?

My day job is massively sedentary, but it is on the third floor, so I can, at least, use that as a way to get my heart rate going. Any other suggestions?

Phase 1.2

In classic fashion, after crafting myself a clever and sensible bicycle training regime, I got busy, and then I got ill.

So, until yesterday, I hadn't done any further longer-distance rides.  After - yet again! - more procrastinating, I set off on another training ride along the Busway:



Several significant differences in preparation this time:

1. Lighter, smaller shoes.

2. Checked my tires.

3. Wore fewer layers.


What Went Well?

+ didn't overheat
+ really enjoyed it
+ didn't injure myself
+ went at a surprisingly fast clip
+ went further than anticipated (see above)
+ remembered to stretch at all
+ remembered to eat a protein bar and drink a ton of water when I got in
+ took a picture to mark the turning-point

What Could Have Gone Better?

- the soles on The Boots are ludicrously thick, and I nearly crippled myself climbing onto the now-far-too-high seat with my smaller shoes
- I was clearly dehydrated before I went out
- I hadn't eaten enough before I went out (seriously: very little all day)
- procrasturbating
- went further than anticipated
- didn't stretch as soon as I got in (again)


What will I do (differently) next time?

> adjust the seat before getting on the bike!
> drink a little more throughout the day (not directly beforehand!)
> get a mount for the phone on the handlebars so I can see how far I've gone rather than rely on a random notion of average speed to tell me when to turn around
> eat more sugary snackage beforehand and take something small with me for the turnaround break


Another thing not to do would be to look at other people's rides on Strava while I'm still feeling chuffed about my distance of 7.7 miles or whatever because one of my friends does 23 mile partially-off-road trips kind of as a matter of course.  If I do do that, I need to remind myself more swiftly that this is a guy who used to go mountain-biking on a Sunday, every Sunday, as a student, even when hungover to all hell. He's had over half his life to get really, REALLY good at this. Nice one, dude.

Remember: Do your own time...

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!

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:

1. 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.
    
2. 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).
    
3. 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.

*biscuits, in this context, means a range encompassing cookies and flapjacks. In fact, flapjacks are particularly dangerous as it's easy to fool yourself into thinking that they're "healthy" because they contain oats, and often fruit. They're also ludicrously fatty and sugary.

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.

Sums it up...

I love this comic sooo much. This time they nailed starting a new exercise regime. :D