Taking the plunge!

Ok! I’ve done it!  I’ve made the commitment!

No…. I’m not getting married!  I’ve committed to the Nerd Fitness 6 Week Challenge!

What this means is for the next six weeks – starting September 24th – I’ll be working towards four specific fitness and life related goals.  Three will be fitness or health related, and the fourth is a “life goal”.

For example, here’s what I wrote down for my goals (copied from my thread on Nerd Fitness):

Goal 1 – NF’s Beginner Workout x3 a week - Right now I’m sedentary, and really need to get my ass in gear. The beginner workout is probably as good a place to start as any. Hopefully I’ll be able to work myself past it? [ +3 STR, +2 STA ]

Goal 2 – Yoga x2 a week. I was doing Yoga steadily for a while, but fell out of the habit months ago. I felt really good while I was doing it, so I think it’s a practice I need to get back into. [ +2 STA, +1 CON ]

Goal 3 – Learn to eat Paleo up to 80% - That’s really what brought me here. I’m excited to change my eating habits to something that, to me, just the thought of it feels healthier. With a small vacation coming up at the end of September, this will be a difficult starting point, but I’m up for the challenge. [ +3 CON ]

Goal 4 – Life Goal - Start steps towards getting into grad school. First steps would be getting tour of the University, meet with the Advisors about my undergraduate grades (which weren’t so great :/ ) and getting my Transcripts sent. [ +2 WIS, +2 CHA ]

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention – NF treats fitness goals like a role playing game, with stats for your Strength, Charisma, Constitution, Wisdom, Stamina and Dexterity.  You can increase your stats by achieving your goals.  It sounds kinda fun, so why not try it out, right?  Anything that can make fitness that little bit more fun is all good to me.

The first steps on this Challenge are going to be hard, as I’ll be out of state next weekend, so it will be harder to control when I get to work out, or where I get to eat.  I’ll do my best to keep up with things though!  I’m an Advenurer!  GRRR!!

LTNS – and diet change!

Wow.  I can’t believe I haven’t posted for a few months – shame on me!  I don’t have a lot to report.  Life has forced my fitness to fall by the wayside.  

I do have the one bit of good news – my weight has dropped from 204 to 190.  I don’t know why, but I’m still happy about it!

EYES:

I’m getting new glasses, and they’re bifocals.  Sigh.  Must mean I’m getting old.  

DIET:

I’ve decided that maybe vegetarianism is a bit too drastic in my situation.  In a household of omnivores trying to be a sole plant based eater is pretty rough.  I’ve been researching the Paleolithic (Paleo, or Caveman) Diet for a while now, and I’m going to give it a try.

Now, basically the gist of it is this:  it’s a pre-agriculture diet.  Like our caveman predecessors used to eat.  Whatever they could hunt or gather: Meat, Vegetables, Fruit, Nuts and Seeds.  Nothing farmed.

Upon talking to Baron, he seems supportive, though he realizes he’ll have to think more about what I eat and what we buy at the store.  I was in the grocery store last night poking around, getting an idea of what I can and can’t eat.  Boy, was I surprised!  Everything has so much processed sugars, wheat products, rice products, tons of stuff that are just right out.  I know this is going to be difficult, but I’m going to try my best.

As suggested by Steve over at NerdFitness, try it for 30 days (which is what I’m doing).  If you like it, great!  If not, that’s ok too.  The point is you gave it a shot, right?

I’ll try to keep up with the updates as needed.  Thanks!

New Toys And A New Grocery Trip!

This week I got a surprise.  In an effort to help me meet my diet goals, Baron picked up a new toy.  He bought a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Express!  Now we can buy fruits and vegetables and make fresh juice – yummy!  Also, we replaced our blender, which was leaky and dying, so yay for more smoothies!

While driving home tonight, we decided to stop by a store we’d never gone into before – The Fresh Market.  It reminds me of a Whole Foods, but a little smaller.  They had an excellent supply of produce, lots of natural fruits, nuts and candies, coffee beans, hard to find oils and vinegars, tons of cheese – it was a really nice little place!  It said on the sign out front that they sell Sushi too, but we didn’t see the sign until we were on our way out.

We picked up some great looking produce – Honeycrisp apples that are freaking HUGE, a bag of seedless red grapes and a bundle of kale.  I’ve really been wanting to try kale.  We also finally – FINALLY – found a jar of tahini!  It only took forever.  Also, we found some really tasty sodas, with sugar instead of HFCS in them.  One of them was Zevia, a soda that contains stevia instead of sugar, which I’ve been dying to try.  I picked the Ginger Root Beer flavour.  Baron picked out some of the coffee beans for himself.

I like the fact that The Fresh Market is a lot closer to my apartment than Whole Foods – a twenty minute ride instead of a forty five minute drive.  It’s smaller, with less of a selection, but I’m hoping to at least make a monthly trip out there for some staple items.  Like most specialty stores of it’s kind, the prices are higher than your average supermarket, but you can find a lot of stuff there that you can’t find anywhere else.  Looking forward to my next trip out there!

I Love Food! I Hate Exercising!

Sorry folks, this one is going to be a long one.

I love food!

This is kind of a recent realization to me.  It never occurred to me until now that this was the case.  In the last few years, I’ve become somewhat of a foodie, and I eat out way too much.  I consider this the result of living a more prosperous lifestyle than I have in the past.  We’re not well-off.  We’re only maybe lower middle class.  But I’m eating much better than I did years ago.

Four and a half years ago, I left my home state of Connecticut to live in more inexpensive pastures.  While I was living in Connecticut, I had no car, so I walked or bussed everywhere I needed to go.  Our budget was extremely tight.  Early on, it was a “ramen three times a day” budget.  Later on, we could afford better than ramen, but not much.  Many days I only ate one meal a day.  I weighed in at about 165lbs on my 5’7″ frame – about twenty pounds higher than my pre-pregnancy weight, which to me, wasn’t bad at all.  I wasn’t terribly unhappy with my weight at the time.  I know it wasn’t the healthiest of situations, but it was what it was.

Fast forward to four and a half years ago.  I moved and ended up in a better financial situation.  Three meals a day!  Wow!  A year later I moved again, and in with Baron, a self-professed butter addict.  There were three meals a day, junk food and dinners out.  My weight shot up from 165 to 205 in just over the first year.  I was floored.

Now I’m trying to make dietary changes, and having such a hard time with it.  Last night I had two and a half bowls of pasta slathered in ricotta cheese.  TWO AND A HALF BOWLS!  It tasted so good I couldn’t stop.  I gave myself a tummyache.  Sadface.  I know I want to eat better, and eat less, I just can’t get myself away from stuff that tastes just so damned good!  I don’t know if this means I have food addiction, or some kind of eating problem or what.

I’m not sure where to go next.  I really need some control in what I eat, and to get over my lack of willpower.  How do I reign in my out of control appetite?

I hate exercising!

I really, REALLY do.  Like I said before, back when I lived in Connecticut, I walked everywhere, and while I had difficulty sometimes (my fibromyalgia sometimes made walking difficult, I’d use a cane when things got too painful), it still got me where I needed to go.  Now, here in Florida, the city I live in is too spacious, and nothing I need is really within walking distance.  I have a car, and the convenience I think has adversely affected my activity level.  I know it has.

I would love to get more exercise into my routine, but I’ve had the damnedest time trying to find something that doesn’t bore me within a week’s time.  I can’t afford a gym membership, I don’t own a bike, and home exercise machines are out of my budget.  I tried doing some at home exercising – like yoga and pilates videos – but again, I got bored.  I was trying to walk every other day – two miles or more – but alas, bored again.

Why can’t I find the right exercise for me?  Is there such a thing?  Am I supposed to just push through it and do it anyways, no matter how bored or unenjoyable it is?  I’m jealous of all the blogs and posts I read about people thrilled about how many miles they’ve done on the treadmill or how many hills they’ve done on the exercise bike.  I want to feel that kind of pride in my accomplishments, too.

I guess that’s where I’m stuck at the moment.  Too much of one thing (food) and not enough of the other (exercise).  I need to figure out how to turn myself around and overcome these obstacles.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!  Do any of you out there run into the same problems I do?  Please share!

Looking forward to the New Year

Well, the Holidays are now behind us, and with it I just celebrated my birthday as well.  Forward lies the New Year, and with it talk of resolutions and life changes.  I know the last few months I haven’t been seeing the success I’ve aimed for in my diet and health goals, so hopefully with a new “starting point”, maybe I’ll be able to refocus and get my butt in gear.

I think right now the hardest thing I’m looking at is trying to make exercise a part of my daily life.  To me, it’s boring and repetitive.  There’s just nothing that I’ve been able to find that’s enjoyable enough for me to want to do it over and over again.  I’ve always been fascinated with Yoga, but my balance has always sucked.  High Intensity Interval Training interests me, but boy does that wipe me out!  It’s hard!  That’s the whole point of it, I guess?  I know exercise is important, both for physical well-being as well as mental health.  It’s something I need as an important part of my life.  I just need to find out what’s the best course of action for me to get the fitness that I need in my life.  Le sigh.

On my personal wishlist I have the Wii and Wii Fit.  Discussing it with Baron, we’ve decided that we’ll pick it up when we can afford it, which will most likely be around income tax time.  I’ve heard good things from friends of mine about the exercises on them, the Yoga options, and the balance board which also doubles as a scale.  I also love some of the other Wii Sports games, like bowling and tennis.  I think it’d be a fun way to get me off the couch or away from my computer, and get a little bit of physical activity into me.

I’ve also signed up for Fitocracy, this really neat site that lets you track not only your fitness goals, but what exercises you’ve done.  It issues you points for the exercises that you’ve done, and you level yourself up based on the points you accrue, kind of like a video game.  You can also unlock achievements for specific sets of fitness goals completed.  There’s also forums and groups.   I’m looking forward to trying out more of the site once I’m exercising regularly and able to post my progress on the site.

Also in the coming year I’ll be focusing more on my diet.  For the Holiday, I was gifted with two vegetarian cook books, so I have plenty of recipes to play with.  I’m looking forward to increasing my fruit and veggie intake on a daily basis, and decreasing my animal proteins substantially.

All in all I’m trying to approach the new year with a positive outlook.  Hopefully I’ll succeed this year where I’ve previously failed.  If I can just change my habits from negative ones to positive ones, I’ll be on the right track.  Happy New Year, everyone.

Fun At The Asian Market!

First, let me apologize for the lack of updates.  I’ve been sick since the day after Thanksgiving with some kind of mutant plague I caught off one of the other guests (Thanks ever so much, you know who you are!) and I think I’m just about recovered from it.  My throat still hurts when I swallow and I’m still a bit hoarse, but I’m not sure if that’s from the plague or my thyroid.  Who knows?

Today we took a trip to our local Asian market – MD Oriental Market – on Fowler Ave. here in Tampa.  It’s not far from where we live and they tend to have a pretty good assortment of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Indian items at fairly reasonable prices.  From soy sauces and oils to curries and fresh fish, they’ve got a bit of everything.  Today when Baron and I browsed the store, we discovered they had recently expanded to include another room in addition to the main store.  From the looks of things, they had expanded their produce and frozen section to this new room, moved all the noodles as well, and added in a ready-made hot foods and pastry counter as well!

Today’s trip kind of had a goal.  Baron wanted me to pick up some things specifically for me to cook and eat on my own while trying to keep with a vegetarian-friendly menu.  We were also cautious to label check as much as we could for high sodium levels and high fructose corn syrup.

Even though upon walking through the door, you’re met with boxes upon boxes of cookies, candies and snackies, we beelined straight for Aisle 1 – produce!  There were a lot of really tasty looking fruit, but we passed on it for the time being.  In hindsight, I should have picked up a few pears.  They were huge!  We skipped on over to the vegetables, and found plenty to choose from.  I first picked up a package of brussels sprouts.  The price was better than the supermarket, and they looked a lot more uniform in size as well.  I really liked my recent attempts at making roasted brussels sprouts with balsamic vinegar, and look forward to trying that again.  We also picked up some orange bell peppers (the price was excellent!), snow peas and a bundle of nine bok choy heads.  I’m not sure how I’ll use a whole nine bok choy, but hopefully I can come up with something.  There were tons of mushrooms to choose from – and I love mushrooms – but we still have half a container of white mushrooms at home, so we passed for the time being.

Next we browsed the frozen items, and decided to come back at the end of our shopping trip (to avoid thawing of course!), and instead browsed the noodles.  We picked up a box of udon since I’ve been out of it forever and I love the thickness of the noodles.  These are really good with a quick stirfry or a peanut sauce.  I also picked up a bottle of furikake (rice seasoning) from an endcap.  After that, we figured we’d come back later, and proceeded to refrigerated goods.  Like we often do, we browsed the section, considering different things, with designs to come back later in our trip.

The next aisle was full of oils and sauces.  We needed to pick up a few things from this aisle, like sesame oil (again, much better prices than the grocery store!), low sodium soy sauce and some lime ponzu sauce.  I was looking for some generic “stir fry sauce” but only found one, and it was oyster flavoured, so I skipped on it.  Baron found green curry paste, and picked up a small tub of that for experimentation purposes.

Next we found ourselves in the cookies and candy aisle.  I pretty much tried to ignore the candy side of the aisle, as I’ve been trying to behave myself with my consumption of sugar.  This was hard, considering that they had those awesome fruit jelly candies that I have loved for years upon years (especially the kiwi flavour with the little seeds in it? OMG NOM!).  I found a couple things, some lemon sandwich cookies and some onion crackers I plan on trying with my hummus.  Hopefully they taste good.

We perused the tea, spices and rice aisle, but didn’t really get much except for a bottle of cumin.  We also found the dofu on this aisle as well, so I picked up the almond and strawberry flavours.  I haven’t tried the almond flavour, so I’m looking forward to that.  We also picked up “peanut meal”, which looked essentially like ground up peanuts, and we’re going to try some experiments with that one too.  Also found some cookies with plum filling and added those to the cart as well.

Now that we’ve reached the end of the store’s aisles, we backtrack to Aisle 1 again, and go back to the noodles.  While browsing amongst the prepackaged ramen  ickyness, we found some interesting stuff.  A spinach ramen noodle and a mushroom ramen noodle in packages of four.  They looked interesting, as I’ve never seen flavoured ramen noodles before, so we decided to pick them up.  We also picked up a few other varieties of flavoured noodle so we were fairly noodled out by the time we left the new room off Aisle 1.  We checked the noodle section’s chest freezers for vegetarian gyoza (dumplings), but only found one small package despite the huge variety of flavoures.  We picked up that, and a chicken and vegetable gyoza in a larger bag.

Lastly we hit the refrigerated section again, which leads right to the checkout aisle.  We picked up a container of red miso (again, for experimentation purposes!), and a few drinks for ourselves – thai coffee for Baron and thai tea for me – yum!  No ramune this time – maybe next time.

In all we spent about $80, which was exactly what Baron had guessed we would.  We still have to do more mainstream grocery shopping at our local grocery store.  Hopefully when my cooking skills expand, we can shop a bit better.  Thankfully we have a pretty good idea at this point what vegetables, fruits and groceries this particular store offers, and where we can get the best deals.  Personally I love the variety of having an Asian market local to us.  I look forward to using this resource even more as my dietary needs progress.

Thanksgiving And The Post-Holiday Plague!

I consider myself to be very fortunate.  For the second year in a row, my friend Patricia’s mother invited me to their home for Thanksgiving Day dinner with the family.  Since I’m not originally from Florida – I’m from Connecticut – my family lives up north, so the holidays can get kind of lonely at times.

I was really surprised at how much food they had made this year!  I was able to fill myself entirely without resorting to eating meat (except the turkey gravy on my mashed potatoes).  I also had the opportunity to try some new things that I’ve been wanting to taste, like dates and figs (not inside newtons).  After dinner, we had the most amazing apple pie, and I had baked pumpkin spice cookies with cinnamon chips.  They were a little soft (I’m not a terribly good cookie baker) apparently they were well-liked.

Patricia’s mom sent me home with a boat-load of leftovers, and Gabe – a mutual friend who was also there – apparently sent me home with the plague.  He had been sick as a dog the week before the holiday, but didn’t want to miss all the good eats, and decided to come out since his fever broke.  Unfortunately, I caught whatever death-plague he was suffering from, and have been sick since.  I’ve been trying to drown myself in Theraflu since, trying to get over it.  This also meant I missed out on the Star Wars beta test since I was in bed most of the weekend, but that’s a story for another time.

So for now, it’s rest for me, soup, and lots of Food Network.  Here’s hope for a speedy recovery!  Toodles for now.

Upcoming Doctor’s Appointment, Bloodwork?

Most people who have known me for any length of time know that I get sick pretty easily.  I mean really easily.  If there’s a bug going around, I’ll most likely catch it.  If it took you a few days to get over it, it’ll take me a week or two.  A simple case of a sore throat will put me in the Emergency Room with severe tonsillitis.  It’s always been like this, since I was a kid.  No one has ever been able to come up with a reason why.

Now, as a 37 year old adult, I’m constantly plagued with feelings of fatigue and unwellness, under the weather and brain fogginess.  When I wake up in the morning, I struggle to keep myself awake, and have to constantly be prodded to keep myself upright.  What’s wrong with me?  I have no idea, but I would love to have answers.

In 2002, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, believed by my doctor to be related to an auto accident from 2000.  My doctor at the time implied that this could be a likely reason for my constant fatigue and malaise, but I’ve always hated the vagueness of my diagnosis.  A diagnosis based on elimination like Fibromyalgia is leaves me with very little faith in it.  It’s easier to believe in something that has concrete test results, y’know?

I take muscle relaxers to deal with the pain from the Fibro when it flares up, which isn’t as often as it used to be, but the fatigue and malaise are still omnipresent, and as of late, worse than ever.  It’s effecting my ability to get anything done in life, from getting up to walk in the evenings, to cleaning my apartment.  I just can’t find the strength or energy to get anything done.  At all.  Ever.

Who's up for a little bloodletting?

Thankfully, I have a new primary care doctor at the Clinic, and she’s ordered some baseline bloodwork.  I’m hoping that maybe some of the tests might show a bit of why I’m so tired all the time.  She’s concerned over the high prevalence of Diabetes and Cancer in my family (both my parents died in their fifties of cancer, and diabetes runs on both sides of the family), so she’s sent for fasting blood sugar, thyroid levels (also runs in my family, and I’ve tested positive for antibodies in the past) and your standard CBC stuff.  My appointment to go back is on Saturday the 19th.  I’ll post a followup blog entry with the results from the bloodwork, and if she has any further ideas as to why I’m suffering these symptoms.

Wish me luck!

Failure. Sadface.

Starting this blog, I realized that not only would have to document the good, but I would have to share the bad as well.  This is going to be one of those posts.

I’ve suffered from bipolar disorder since my teens, and today I woke up with in a crushing depression.  I didn’t have enough cash this week to refill one of my prescriptions, so I’ve been taking 1/3 of a dose all week, trying to stretch until Friday.  Today,  I couldn’t do anything except curl up with my cat and my stuffed bear.  My alarm went off for my daily walk and I ignored it.  It took me another two hours before I could summon up the strength of will to even sit down at my computer to start writing this.  I’m still writing this, three hours after that.

I feel like I’ve failed in the simplest of goals.  I didn’t think “walk for the next five days” was too difficult.  Maybe my expectations are too high?  I’m finding myself increasingly frustrated by my inability to keep up with the changes I’m trying to make in my diet and lifestyle.  My budget isn’t keeping up with my diet, and I’m running out of non-meats well before our next payday.  It’s all feeling like an exercise in futility at this point, and I’m not sure where to go next.

It might be the truth.  It might be the bipolar disorder talking.  I don’t know.  I just know that for something that I want so badly, it’s seemingly so unattainable.  Maybe tomorrow, it’ll be easier.  Who is to say?

Motivation To Exercise And How I Got Off My Butt Today!

I hate exercising.

There.  I said it.  I think everyone who has started on a weight loss journey, no matter how great their goal, has started it with those three words.  Before now in my life, while I was never really happy with my weight, I considered myself healthy enough to walk myself all over town.  “Town” was a fairly small city, and without a car, walking was the primary mode of transportation if I wanted to get anywhere.  It was something I did with regularity.  Since moving from Connecticut to Tennessee, and then to Florida three years ago, well, that changed everything.  Tampa is a very spread out city and nothing is really in walking distance.  Plus we have a car.  I’m not getting out for the fresh air and exercise that I used to on a daily basis, and it started to show.  My weight jumped up forty pounds.  I started retaining water in my legs and ankles.  I feel awful.  My doctor finally told me I need to cut out the salt and get out and exercise.

I can’t afford a gym, as much as I’d like to.  So I’m left with the basics.  Let’s just start with walking, shall we?

About two-plus or so months ago, I started walking regularly.  I had an alarm set on my cell phone to remind me when to walk every night, Monday through Friday – just before sun down, when the sun wasn’t unbearable, the Florida heat was letting up and I wouldn’t get a sunburn.  I would do circuits around the apartment complex, because outside the complex, I live on some pretty busy thoroughfares that aren’t very conducive to nice walks.  I thought I was doing ok.  Bumped 2 laps up to 3.  Was about to bump my 3 laps up to 4 when our vacation time came around – New Orleans!

OMG the amount of walking we did while we were in New Orleans I thought my legs were going to fall off!  We enjoyed the time away, and I was ready to get back into my routine, and then the worst happened:  I got sick.  I got hit with a nasty headcold-flu-thing that laid me up for at least a week and a half, maybe two weeks.  Since then, I just haven’t been able to motivate myself back onto the exercise bandwagon.  Each night my alarm goes off, each night I turn it off and make an excuse.

Yesterday, I read a bunch of fitness blogs, and a ton of personal stories about people overcoming their hatred of of exercising, and learned a lot of them started from right where I am.  I need to buckle down and take my goals seriously.  I promised myself that I was going to do this, that I was tired of failing myself and my goals.  I popped open Google maps and made a plan – I was going to walk a mile out from my apartment, and a mile back.  2 miles, I think that’s an ok start?  There was a particular University building I was using as my 1 mile marker.  Once I reached that building, I was going to turn around and come back.  I popped “Dune Messiah”, the second Dune book, on my iPod and headed out at 6:05pm.

Things did not go as planned.

First, some of my mp3s were messed up.  How annoying.  Second, I could not for the life of me find that building.  I looked, checking each building on the street, but it wasn’t there.  I was nearing the next major intersection, which I knew was too far.  I decided to head back, re-check my maps, and see where I went wrong.  I really wished I had a pedometer, it’d have made this so much easier.  Thinking I had cut myself short I was disappointed in myself.  I didn’t want to fail again.

I got home, tried to unwind a bit, and checked the map again.  I didn’t cut myself short.  I had actually passed my goal, by about .3 miles!  My total walk was 2.6 miles in all.  A whole .6 miles past my goal.  I’m elated!  My legs ached a bit and one foot was kind of hurting, but I think if I keep at it, my body will adjust.  Time will tell.

Tomorrow, my alarm will go off at 6pm, and I’ll head out to make the same walk again.  I’ll be doing my damnedest to maintain at least this level of activity from now til Friday, and see how my body responds to it.  I think this may be the start of something amazing.