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!

Back in the saddle

TL;DR - New regime seems interesting; cycling longer distances is a bugger against the wind, but my app has great safety features for cycling/ running alone in isolated places; those of us at the whim of menstrual cycles have some interesting things to learn about what progesterone seems to (spoiler: metabolic and heart rate changes)…

So I’m back in the exercise mindset and have started using the Fitstar by Fitbit app. So far I’m impressed - the first session in the “Get Strong” program I’ve selected (muscle-building and cardio - exactly what I’m after) was 20 minutes long, with three short breaks programmed in, and it didn’t seem ridiculously taxing and yet I am exactly the right amount of sore today. I need some new stretches for calf muscles - anyone got any good ones that won’t fry a bendy?

I’d already committed to either going dancing last night or, if no-one was going to come with me, a longish bike ride today. Bike ride it was, despite having woken up with fun menstrual cramps. I dithered a little, but eventually set off wearing too many layers and with a brisk tailwind. Obviously that was less fun on the way back (although I’d stripped down one layer, which helped), but, oddly, having given myself permission to stop whenever I needed to, I persisted all the way back.

I also tried out the “Beacon” element of the Strava app, and sent the associated link to a couple of people who were able to watch the little dot of me trail out then home, even being told how much battery life my phone still had! Someone’s put a lot of thought into that…

Way out

Way back

Back home, I showed one of the beacon-watchers (a similarly nerdy scientist) graphs of my heart-rate on the way out and back (distinctly different!), and discovered a weird pattern in my resting heart rate (RHR) courtesy of the Fitbit I wear. Turns out my RHR shifts across the weeks in a distinctive pattern. I did some Googling and found out that heart-rate and baseline body temperature shift across the menstrual cycle, peaking briefly at ovulation, then climbing again through the luteal phase. This could explain why a lot of us are different amounts of hungry and for different types of food across the cycle - our metabolism is shifting in response to these hormonal changes.

I don’t know about you, but this is going to make a difference to how I train across the cycle. I need to put some thought into exactly how - does this mean more strength-building challenges in the first part of the cycle (taking advantage of lower joint laxness and lower injury risk) and more cardio in the second part (taking advantage of running hotter) or the opposite way around (i.e. more cardio when my system’s slower)?

I’d be interested in hearing what anyone has to say about this. (Also whether anyone’s started a pool for when I next injure myself and put myself out of the running for all this… running around.)

_________________________

Some links on RHR/ menstrual cycle research, if you’re interested:

Twelve month study by Clue with largeish subject pool

Personal study by one Redditter

Another study from 2000

Sometimes it's difficult. That’s okay

#TimeToTalk 

Last weekend I had a panic attack. It wasn’t a particularly bad one, putting aside the fact that they’re all, you know, horrible. I mean, no concept with either of those words in it is nice.  Even writing this out has made me super-aware of my heartbeat, the way it fists on my breastbone; my breath, the way those accelerating swells bind me into my clothing. And how, okay, that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t stop. It just doesn’t stop. And the heat’s rising, that very particular sensation at my temples and if I lift my fingers I’ll see them trembling and my skin is tingling and...

Breathe out. Slowly.

Butitsallhappeningitsallmybodyrevoltingallthoughtschiming

Breathe in. Slowly.

CaughtinsomethingthatIcantescapebecauseitsmeandwhywontitstop

It stopped before. You mastered this. You have enjoyed your body’s good reactions to challenge. You will inhabit it happily again.

Nonononononono!

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Before all that, it turns out, is something like a migraine aura. I caught a whiff of it, running late for a gig in what turned out to be an impossible-to-breach venue once everyone else had gone inside.

“I’ll power through it, distracted by the entertainment and my pride in my friends’ achievements...”

Wandering alone around deserted-looking buildings in the dark, in a quiet and imposing part of town is no-one’s favourite. Certainly not mine. Well, sometimes. But not that night. And knowing I was on the verge of panic was a mixed blessing, let me tell you. So I made my way back to my bike in the freezing cold and called everyone I trusted who I thought might be available. Luckily for me, someone finally answered, and I was able to talk to someone who wasn’t going to judge me, tell me what to do, or ask me a ton of unhelpful questions. They said:

“I can do whatever you need - either let you talk or tell you what works for me or blather to distract you.”

Right there, teetering one-footed on the edge of desperation, I chose for me to talk, then them to distract me. Once it was clear to me that I was only rehearsing the panic that had led me there rather than actually purging it, I asked to swap roles. Then I sat down, caressing the icy, fake cobbles of the ground around the bike stands. I imagined the heat of sun-warmed rock beneath my trembling fingers, and I listened to my friend talk, uncondemning and measured, and then they moved onto a topic close to both of our hearts that was also not a burden to me and I felt myself uncoiling, there on pitiless concrete, softening into the circle of a hug from 50 miles away.

Thank you. You know who you are.

I spent the next two days poisoned with adrenalin and its fallout. I treated myself very carefully. I was as assertive as I could be about my needs. I supported people making and performing art. I was lovely. I was tired. I was present. I was fed and watered and wonderful and happy and so, so tired.

So I’ve learned some things from this:

1. You can feel the panic aura as it approaches.  This is useful; very useful to know.

2. These things work:

a) Recognising and putting boundaries on it before it gets going properly.

b) Phoning someone you trust, if you can’t get physically to someone you trust.

c) Sitting down and touching the ground, no matter where you are.

d) Talking yourself down using a kind of loving dissociation.

e) Eating hot chicken soup once the main freak-out is passed.

f) Talking about it so that you can remember all the people saying “that sucks, poor you” rather than “get away from me, freak!”

g) Remembering.

3. My friends are even more awesome than I already thought they were.

4. I can ask for help.

5. If I go for a week of short/ crap sleeps I lose my shit.

I hope this has been useful for any of you. It’s been scary and useful for me – both the writing and the sharing.

Be well, lovely folk.

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.

Some advice about brain weasels

Or: what to do when you’ve started the day with negative emotions...

More of my friends are adopting the “brain weasel” nomenclature than I would have, perhaps, anticipated. This makes for quite efficient conversations:

“My brain weasels are loud today...”
“Tell ’em to sod off, the little buggers.”

“Sorry: I have brain weasels today.”
“No worries - let me know if you’d like to meet up later...”

Today someone was able to use the term to let me know that they were having a difficult morning. Then they asked: did I have any advice?  Turns out that... yes. I rattled off a pretty decent list. Revised version below, because I thought it might be useful to others:

Help! I’m in work and the brain weasels are snapping. What can I do?

Thing is, you can’t exactly go back to bed, can you? So here are some work-compatible things to do:

1. Maslow it - drink more water (go and do that right now), eat well, ensure you feel safe/ physically comfortable in your environment.


2. Adrenalin seems to mute them. Maybe go for a brisk trundle at lunchtime. If something more strenuous is an option, maybe consider that...


3. Listen to (powerful, strong, happy, or positively defiant) music. Plug it in, baby!


4. Pick a thing (it can be absolutely tiny) and do it well today. That often shuts them up. If it works, do another one. Rinse, repeat. One step. Then the next. The day is over. You won.


5. Treat them like a belligerent fundamentalist/ troll* - when you answer their snide little accusations, they’ll switch tack. You can choose to ignore them or refute every argument. Both approaches take energy, but ignoring/ refuting also demonstrates control, which giving in and admitting they’re right (they’re not) does not (it also saps energy, but builds no strength).
   
   Think of this like physical health:


1. If you exercise, it’s hard work at first and hurts, but less work long-term, because you have a fitter body to carry you around in.


2. If you either go into to denial or decide that you’re determined to beat an illness, you’re WAY more likely to than if you just meekly give in. Hardiness for the win.

A favourite refutation I came up with recently was when I was trying desperately to find something, brain foggy and starting to hyperventilate, and the weasels said: “Hah! You’ve lost it! You’re rubbish! You don’t know where it is!” and I found myself saying: “Yeah? If you’re so much bloody** better than me, you can tell me where it is then! No? Then shut the hell** up! From now on, you’d better prove you’re actually better than me any time you try this nonsense, or you forfeit all right to bloody** criticise me!”

I won’t deny it - that did feel good...! :)


6. In my experience/ opinion, comfort blankets DO NOT WORK. They will just give the metaphysical rodents more ammunition. So do something challenging you know you do well; don’t resort to sugar/ caffeine/ alcohol/ Facebook/ mobile phone games, etc.


7. Find someone pleasant to talk to who has the time and energy for you. Don’t feel you have to talk about your problems, but do talk about stuff you like as well as stuff you don’t like.


8. Make a plan for the evening that involves healthy behaviour (exercise, good food, early night, helpful social time, etc. - even if all that happens is you go to bed early out of all of those, making a plan and executing it will feel excellent and tell those pernicious, furry idiots off good and proper)

And that’s it, really. Obviously you may not be able to do more than one or two of these in a work day (though 1, 2, 4, and 8 are pretty feasible!), but it’s a start... :D I’m thinking of printing a simple version of this out and putting it somewhere prominent for when I feel like I’m having/ about to have a bad day myself... Any further suggestions?


______________________________
*fundamentalists come in all forms - pick your poison, it’s not all religious

**The language was a lot worse than that - swearing is very energising, if you’re me...

Today is the first day...

... of the rest of the working year.

(I appreciate that some of you may have worked between 24th December and today - sorry about that! I, however, have not. Benefits of working for an academic-related organisation, I guess...)

So! :) How’s it been going for you lot? Me, I’ve been powering through the day on rampant optimism and a renewed determination to prove to myself that I am a worthwhile human being (I have had too little broken sleep - more about this in another post, I suspect). In fact, that’s the core of my “resolution” for this year - basically: feel better about myself.

Obviously there are various different elements to this (i.e. pretty much every aspect of my life! :)), but for each one I do actually know what I need to do, I’ve just not always been doing it. So, in order to inspire myself, I reckon I just need to keep that clear “feel better about myself” goal in front of me every time I find myself wussing out and cutting corners. Because when I work at doing things right, I feel better about myself.
 
Ludicrously simple; diabolically difficult.
 
I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. I generally start on projects/ changes/ movements that look like them in December, when it’s dark, and miserable, and cold, partly to prove to myself that you don’t need a set date to kick off Doing Stuff Right, just a good mindset. Sometimes I start them in April, or February. Or on a Thursday or something. Because I know that if I keep waiting for some kind of perfect kick-off signal, I’ll keep on finding excuses.
 
I have a narrow line to walk here - let me introduce you to the brain weasels (I’m not going to dignify them with title case): they represent the snarly, snide, tricksy little bits of me that are always looking for reasons to put me down. They say tiny, mean things - their sharp, narrow teeth and sinuous forms are slippery and insistent. They are composed of fear and are like handy little pocket abusers - you may even have left the originals behind, but they’ve sowed tiny, portable, conveniently-sized memes to take with you everywhere. (I’m sure you know the kind of thing they like to say: you’re not good enough, you’re a failure, you’re a disappointment.) They snigger every time you trip or drop things or run late. And I do those things a lot... They represent the opposite of “you are a worthwhile human being”.

They’re wretched little bastards and they need to be stopped. Or, okay, well, transmuted somehow.
 
The ways to beat brain weasels need to be as multitudinous and flexible and cunning and (nearly as) small as they are. Because the more you give in to their assertions about your worth, the more you’ll give up putting effort into doing stuff right, and the more fodder there’ll be for their grindy little teeth. I’ve seen this negative spiral demonstrated very clearly in my physical health, and it’s all too evident in my mental health, if you know where to look.  I want to get a series of positive spirals going - feel better, do better, feel better, do better, feel better, do better, feel better, do better...
 
What’s the narrow line? Well, years of playing host to the weasels has left me with some difficult-to-repurpose mental constructs in which the furry little gits flourish. And one of them is where I find it really, really difficult to take compliments. Because I may know fine well that the weasel runs are ridiculous, and that they make me miserable, but I’m used to them, see? They’re home. They’re where I’m comfortably miserable.  So the more loudly people are nice to me, the less I can take it. I get so overwhelmed with this enthusiastic evidence that at least part of me looks dramatically different to the Worthless Map of Fay (© Weasel Enterprises) that I throw up as many big walls as I can to stave off the information overload. Go too far and I cry and shake and run away. Literally. It’s messy.

Slowly I’ve been working on my anti-weasel techniques. I’m being scientific about it, which means being better at spotting both negative and positive patterns, instead of taking either states for granted or treating them as neutral. I have learned that the following things are particularly good at helping silence/ squish weasels:

1. Walking. Anywhere, at any time. But it needs to be fast/ vigorously. At my own pace, anyway. 
    
2. Dancing. Stomp on their little heads! Drown them with music! Okay, maybe just stun them into submission and muffle their annoying squeaks to the occasional half-hearted “you’re too old to be doing this!” (Yeah, I’m manifestly not, so shut up! :D) 
    
3. Hosting performances. You’d think that the nerve-wrackingness of this and the massive potential for tripping up (Get the names wrong! Stutter! Offend someone accidentally!) along with opportunities for jealousy would be fodder for the invisible shit-stirrers, but somehow: no. I enjoy the performances too much to be jealous, and frankly, when you’re running an event, you have no time for weasels. 
    
4. Spending time with particular friends. You know the type - diverting yet supportive as appropriate. Also: the wider I allow my network to be, the better my chances of spending time with people whose personal styles will fit the mode I need to be in. And the less chance of the weasel who says “you’re just a burden to your friends!”  
    
5. Properly singing something I know well. There’s a pattern emerging. 
    
6. Spreadsheeting. Doing something both systematically and creatively. It’s something I have developed good... wait... excellent, expert skills in, and it’s something I can sit quietly and nerd out over.

The answer appears to be: do things irrefutably well with good people. Keep pushing at (sometimes tiny) increments of What Could Be Even Better so that the evidence for being worthwhile mounts manageably. Get the adrenalin flowing. Allow meaningful connections with other humans. Demonstrably build up the ability to be more awesome.

It’s not about comfort blankets (because the more moping/ eating crappy food/ taking a taxi rather than cycling/ playing dumb computer games I do, the worse I feel) but about strapping in tightly before heading off towards the horizon, laughing uproariously and whooping at the steep bends.

So I will be giving myself tiny compliments. Every day. Not ignoring the bad stuff (because weasels loooove it when you’ve got stuff you’re procrastinating over - oh my yes!), but aiming for the kind of objective approach I’d use with someone who isn’t me. And also coming up with ways to improve things.  In other words, I’ll be running a Lessons Learned on my life. Every day, if I can, no matter how vestigially, sometimes.

And, in the meantime: getting fitter, having more fun, and being more awesome, a bunch of which I’ll be posting on here. :)

Unwelcome Guests (in the body)

This has not been a great week, physical (and therefore mental) health-wise.

Basically, despite being Little Miss Healthy, my joints decided that the thing they really, really wanted to do was suddenly stiffen and hurt. All of them. A lot.

Now, sometimes this happens, e.g. hurting like the Devil after dancing for the first time in years, and more often than not I can point at a cause and work away from/ ignore it accordingly:

1. Dancing like a maniac/ standing for ages - the concomitant muscles/ joints hurt as you'd expect.
   
   Solution: Rest, plenty of water, stretching beforehand, bracing properly throughout standing period to prevent if possible.



2. A long period without daily physio exercises - knees in particular suffer from this one
   
   Solution: Ease back into physio (i.e. lower reps until muscles restabilised).



3. Being dehydrated - general achiness (apparently, according to my browser's spellcheck, this isn't a real word - tough) and "tiredness" of joints.
   
   Solution: The Universal one. Sorry. Well, obviously, I drink more water, and wait for recovery (a day or two).



4. Eating too much sugar - as above dehydration.
   
   Solution: again, pretty obviously cutting the sugar down, working out why I'm eating badly (tired? bored? sad? leaving meals too late, so needing a quick fix, etc.?), drinking more water and eating more protein (don't ask me: it seems to work!)

Of course, sometimes I just get the 'flu or something, which again is known and can be accounted for.

Last Thursday I started hurting. And it didn't get better and in fact progressed. It was bits that normally don't hurt this extensively (wrist, knuckles, ankles, hips, jaw) as well as the usual suspects (neck/ shoulder, knees) and some old friends (lower back, upper back). And I've now been through a whole slew of emotions, including the classics of denial, anger, bargaining and depression (with a hearty dose of fear to boot), currently wobbling in and out of acceptance.

Wise people (with much worse versions of this condition than mine) have told me to not stress, and that it's just a flare-up, just a phase; I'll be back to normal in no time. I'm more optimistic in the mornings, when I'm reasonably mobile, but right now, with my hands seizing as I type, my optimism could do with some work.

Other people have told me I should eat this magic leaf, or cut out potatoes, peppers, and tomatoes. Others are counselling NSAIDs. I am honestly struggling to stay focused on anything other than putting one foot in front of the other, and I suspect that I am a massive grump monster in the evenings.

Being me is hard work right now, and with two weeks to go before I drive myself and a big pile of equipment to Edinburgh to start the gruelling marathon of the Fringe, I'm starting to get a little troubled...

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.

Reach for the Stars

I think it's fair to say that the sponsorship effort is going pretty well for The Walk.  As you know, I beat my original target and raised it.  And then I beat that and raised it again.

And now I'm close to beating that.  Blimey. People are lovely.

Raising attention for this has meant stepping outside yet another comfort zone, one that came up in conversation last night as my mate and I stumbled home for 2½ hours from a gig in a London location so outer that it didn't even have a London postcode. She was being quite... insistent... on helping me with my (large, but not as large as usual, and on wheels, okay?) case.  She was lovely and patient and helpful and non-patronising, but letting her carry my case was a bit of a mental struggle for me.

To say that asking for help doesn't come easily to me is a bit of an understatement.  My first phrase, apparently, as a child was: "I do it myself".  (My mother used to say that my first word was "No".  Hard to say how accurate that is...)  So it's been a fairly overwhelming characteristic of mine since, basically, early cognition.  My ingrained dedication to self-reliance is not about to change with ease/ at all/ ever/ overnight, is what I'm trying to say.

I'm getting better at it.  For example, I'll accept help with much more alacrity these days.  Not quite the same as actively seeking assistance (and I've always been someone happy to go seek information, being more than willing to accept that there's always someone who knows more than you do about, e.g. where the condensed milk lives in this shop, how to open the car bonnet of the car I'm driving, ou est la gare, etc.) but, you know, a start.  A big part of the last three years has been accepting what I physically just can't do and persuading myself that I'm worth getting it done well and not hurting myself in the process.  At some level, Being Able To Do Stuff is enmeshed with my feeling of self-worth.  And yet, as with my complicated perception of the desirability of dieting, I don't judge others by what they can't do...

This is echoed in my sometimes desultory attitude to publicising my own events/ merchandise, etc.  The best way to persuade myself to request assistance is to remind myself who else suffers if I don't.  So having a goal where others will benefit if I do well is über-motivational, and this has got me pushing mention of my sponsorship drive around the shop. And now that everyone and their monkey know that I'm doing it, I can't bottle out. And if I'm definitely going to walk six miles in a go, I'll need to get the tools to be able to do it without breaking myself and returning to the place where I need to ask for help.

Ta-da! Fay-logic circumlocuted! I win out over the apathy!waaah, and Sport Relief get a bag of cash to help people in need.  Oh, and the people who give me the money get to feel good about themselves too... :)

Thanks! :D

The Shape of Desire

Part of yesterday's conversation with the physio was her questioning why I'm doing the (upper-body) exercises that I'm doing.  Why am I lifting weights, doing press-ups, etc.?

In particular, she was concerned that these exercises were a bit, well, male.  She covered, elucidating, saying there was nothing wrong with that per se, but that she was wondering: was I wanting to be a body-builder [cue hunched shoulders and loosely-raised fists]?

Well, there it is.  Why am I doing this?  Why am I pushing muscles in my upper body that were not designed by nature to be massive (due to HMS and, well, a lower testosterone level than the average bloke) to build?

Several answers, not all of which may be either wise, feasible, or even the whole story:

1. In October 2005 I had a six-pack and could lift sofas without much effort.  I also had the kind of lightly but defined muscular physique that made both women and men go "hmmm..." and "ooooh...!" with a little reaching-out gesture. (Yeah, baby...)

a) Being strong felt good physically - my wobbly joints were much more secure.

b) Being strong felt good mentally - being able to rely on myself and feel comfortable (even superior) in my body was rather nice.

c) My personal vanity is, perhaps, a little odd.  The resources needed to conform to many elements of acceptable Western femininity feel like way more trouble than they're worth, to me.  However, I revel in decking myself in a certain way as I move through the world.  I want people to see me, at a glance, as very much my own person, as attractive in an unconventional sense, and blending elements across genders.  I also like to look healthy.  So a little ripped (again)? Yes please! :)

(I felt right at home in Cambridge really quickly.  Wonder why...)


2. I gave up on that level and type of healthy after several things happened:

- motorbike (okay, fine: scooter) accident that made Borked Shoulder the way it is today (February 2006).

- massive (they took photos for a medical journal!) benign tumour;

- recovering from the surgery that removed it (vertical 5" abdominal incision - wasn't allowed to pick up anything heavier than 5kg for, well, a while - September 2007);

- the knee-based accident (and all the other, less easily pointed-at elements) that propelled me into the Year of The Stick (September 2011); and

- subsequent slow recovery from that.

I started feeling old.  I let myself become dispirited by the constant setbacks (I tried building in strength in 2006; scuppered myself lifting furniture; tried getting fit again 2010-11, not as hard as now, but cycling everywhere... then Stick Year... and then again in the summer of 2013...); I rationalised it as "I'm not meant to be fit", I think. And yet clearly this other model of me persisted underneath the whole time, because now I'm thinking: screw old, there are people who take up marathon running in their 70s.  I want to take this body as far as it can in terms of healthy, fit, and strong.


3. I don't want a male physique, I want a strong female physique, and I don't think I'll get that purely from physio exercises - I'll need to challenge myself, not just maintain myself.  I'm also pretty sure it would take more effort, time, and calories than I would consider worth spending getting perturbingly "bulky".


4. Up until now, not one single person (male or female) has told me that I shouldn't do press-ups, etc.

My dad (the very one who's struggled with my gender queerity in recent years) showed me how to do them; and a recent boyfriend showed me the variations on the theme.  We did them in school, and we were expected to do them in the few martial arts lessons I attended.  They're part of my model for "becoming fit and strong".


5. I enjoy doing weights, press-ups, planks, etc. Not only do I think they're fun (look, I'm a bit weird, just give up and go with this), but I enjoy being able to do them well (possibly in a tomboyish, showing-off-physically kind of way).


So here's the thing I'm going to try to find a way to say succinctly to the physio: this is the kind of body I want to aim for.  It's not unfeasible, and it's not toxic, so please help me get to a point where I can make that happen.  Ta!

So, unless anyone's got any better perspectives, that's The Plan.

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.

No Man’s Land

Some of will not want to read this. Some of you may well be relieved to see someone else saying this out loud...

Like, I suspect, a fairly large number of people out there putting together and maintaining an exercise regime, I am an adult person with an active pair of ovaries and a uterus and - along with work and other time commitments, current state of health, sleep deprivation and Stuff, I need to factor this state of affairs into my exercise planning.

For example, about a week or so before menstruating, my already floppy joints become even floppier, and more prone to damage. I need to take this into account when, e.g. doing press-ups or weights - I’m liable to injure myself. I’m also going to have to put extra effort into lifting, which may affect my perception of my strength and progress. With the mood-shifts that can come - while these can be combated by exercise, the bad ones can make actually going and doing exercise a harder ask.

I tend to change weight/ shape around this time, with water retention adding to my woes.  Which means that checking to see if I’d lost weight/ the burden of spare Fay on my belly last week was pretty much doomed!  In addition, the urge to stuff carbohydrates (especially sweet, short-chain ones) in my maw is rarely higher than at this time of my cycle. My blood pressure is often higher than normal, and migraines pounce, rounding out already foul and pathetic moods with their very own nauseating magic.

All this can pretty much be accounted for and worked around:

• Don’t give in to your inner grump and overdo the weights.
• Do nudge yourself firmly to a sensible timetable of exercise, no matter how much doleful poetry (seriously, it was dreadful) you compose on your phone on the way to the gym.
• Do stop eating when you’re actually full.  Keep leaning to the high-fibre, lower-refined-sugar snacks.
• Drink even more water.
• Don’t berate yourself - you’re more likely to give up on yourself and sulk in front of the TV with your own personal barrel of fudge.
  Mmmh. Fudge.

I’m annoyed today, but trying to see the bright side of it.  I was due to do the Long Walk Back Home Goal today but luckily I’d already decided to do that on Saturday and do the gym tonight, as usual.

Then last night happened. Pain so intense it was like being continually punched.  It was liked being a teenager again. (Whenever I say this, it’s pretty much short for: A Bad Thing™, by the way.)  It was also, inconveniently, at 4:30am. And yes, I already had a hot water bottle. And yes, I used pretty much every pain management technique I’ve got. And yes, I got up, walked around, drank some water, tried to distract myself, then gave up and took some paracetamol. I found getting up an almighty arseache this morning, and reluctantly decided that, all things considered, I’d be doing myself more harm than good doing Proper Exercise today. Nine hours later, while sad I won’t be doing it, I haven’t changed my mind.

For those of you who may be thinking: wuss - you may well be right. And here’s a thing: I don’t care*. A massive part of this whole project is about trusting my body and the signals I receive from it, learning again how to interpret them properly.  I did quite a lot of exercise yesterday morning, having already started this new phase of the cycle, so I’m not backing away from exercise without trying it.  I’m just not going to stagger to the gym, bleeding heavily and sleep deprived. A mistake in judgement doing too little on one day of the month will do, I reckon, less damage than doing too much.

Remember: I’ve been here before, I’ve exercise-munted and crippled myself more than once.  (*I’m sufficiently self-aware to realise that this is me arguing against one of my own inner daemons; this is, after all, part of what writing this journal is for.  This one is convinced I’ll never be good enough at anything, and tells me that telling me this at every opportunity is for my own good. It’s a dick.)  I’m pretty sure I should pay attention when an organ a similar size to my heart starts shredding itself.  Back in the bad old days of the Massive Tumour™, I would move as little as humanly possible for the first three days of my menstrual cycle. Even now I’m occasionally nervous about hurting myself at such a time.

If I’m still not fit to do it tomorrow, this may become the first session I’ve cancelled since committing to the timetable.  I’m choosing to see this as a learning point rather than failure, as I’ve been at this for less than a month, and I reckon it’s going to take a few of them to establish patterns (as well as achieve some of those pesky goals!).

I am, after all, a scientist at heart as well as a poet...