Day 1

Wednesday: Yoga in the Park, one hour 

I think it would be interesting to go back and see how many blog posts I’ve called “Day 1” and evaluate how all those big plans worked out. Ambitious “day 1” declarations are sorta my whole personality, according to some people. (I might remind those people that I trained for and completed an entire Ironman, so sometimes things actually work out fine.)

Anyway THIS Day 1 is day 1 of the renewed Whole30, and since the last one went just fine I don’t see any particular reason for ridicule or skepticism. I even got on the scale this morning to get a new “starting” weight (exactly the same as at the end of the last Whole30).

I declared before heading to yoga this morning that I was going to give it one more chance to not be weird, but unfortunately it seems to be just weird now. The instructor was talking a lot about reaching, for some reason, and to demonstrate she went over to a nearby tree and reached for a branch about three inches out of reach. Then she said, “Now watch what happens when I reach for it with my energy,” and we just sat there as literally nothing whatsoever moved or changed. I was half-expecting the branch to bend gracefully into her hand, but no. Then we all had to go to our own trees and reach for our own branches, so I amused myself by going for one I could actually reach and saying, “I win.”

I think if I actually want to start winning at yoga I need to stay home and use my time a bit more productively, but I am a little sad because this started out as pretty fun.

Whoa

Monday: Yoga 30 minutes, walk 1.5 miles
Tuesday: Weights 20 minutes, walk 1.2 miles 

I have been faithfully using the Thumper on my Achilles and calf and have also been pretty good about taking a slow walk every day. Yesterday a miracle occurred and my Achilles stopped hurting.

I’m not sure exactly how to say what I’m about to try to say. But I think when you’ve lived with a pain for long enough—no matter how mild—it just becomes part of your life and actually starts to condition you. So I might say my Achilles feel pretty good today, and that’s true in relative terms, but in the back of my mind of course they’re still going to hurt when I get up after sitting for a while. Or go down stairs. Or walk for any distance. That’s just a given. Only yesterday some of those things didn’t actually hurt at all, and I started realizing that I have been avoiding or delaying standing up, using the stairs, and walking because of the anticipated pain. My pain was slowly training me to be more sedentary.

So yesterday was fantastic and eye-opening. And just to be clear, my Achilles do kind of hurt again today, but nothing like this has happened in four or five years, so surely it points toward healing.

A fresh hell

Friday: Walk 1.2 miles
Saturday: Walk 1.5 miles
Sunday: Walk 1.5 miles

Yesterday the first day in a while that I haven’t been migrainey, but I’ve still decided not to push it (see definitions). That’s partly because I haven’t had a day off work in weeks, and that seems enough stress. 

I’m not sure what happened to me last week—probably a hormone freakout, because on top of headaches I was having terrible hot flashes, which is an exciting new symptom. My strategy for survival was desperately avoiding getting hot, even a little, because a little hot would turn into a lot hot, which would then blossom into a headache.

Definitions:

push it (v): Do literally anything physical beyond a very slow morning walk. 

Migraines and magic

Wednesday: Yoga in the Park
Thursday: Walk 1.5 miles

I’m feeling slightly better but have now started getting migraines—some pain-y ones but mostly visual auras. Today it’s visual auras, which still make it very difficult to work at a computer, so things are piling up alarmingly. 

I don’t know if this new wrinkle is from rampaging hormones or crappy food or a reaction to spending a lot more time than usual at my desk or some combination of those, but at any rate I am making a real effort to eat better today and take lots of eye breaks. Also I just took an Excedrin Migraine even though nothing actually hurts, so I’m hoping that will let me at least get something done this afternoon.

Yoga was pretty good yesterday until the instructor started in on an incoherent spiritual rant of some kind. It wasn’t just that it was super woo-woo; it literally made no sense. Then two students chimed in with weird stories about “energy” + something about tarot cards, and honestly it makes me not want to go back. Or maybe I was just grumpy because I had a headache during all this and wanted to go home and take an Advil, HARD TO SAY. But seriously this class is sponsored by the public library so cool it with the flakiness, people.

Bad night

Tuesday: Rest 

I call it “rest” but really it’s: horrible night of sleep, very early morning, and tons to do today.

We went to bed super-early last night because we had to be up at 4:30 to take Mik to the airport. But the power went out sometime before 11, causing a fire alarm to start making a horrible noise, which woke me up and started me worrying about all the food in the freezer, whether we’d be able to cook Mik breakfast, global warming, etc. So I slept on and off after that, but then starting around 2 the power turned on and off three separate times—and every time it did it would cause M.H.’s phone to light up the room, the Sleep Number bed to make a loud clunking noise, and the fire alarm to switch from its horrible but relatively quiet growl to a loud “low battery” beep every 30 seconds. I must have eventually gotten back to sleep because when the alarm finally went off I was in the middle of a nightmare.

(Obviously M.H. slept peacefully through it all. Not jealous.)

But then I had to give my baby back to his college AND I theoretically have to work all day. Grumpy face.

Transitioning

Saturday: Walk 1.2 miles
Sunday: Walk 1.2 miles
Monday: Walk 1.3 miles

Mik goes back to college tomorrow, and I WOULD go straight back into Whole30ing, but we have a refrigerator full of leftover taco bar at the moment, so it’s going to take a few days. I also really want to do more on the exercise front again, but I haven’t really been feeling that great. I’m not sick, but I definitely don’t feel 100% well either. Hopefully it’s just from lots of gluten and time at my desk, rather than a virus. (Actually, as I think about it for a hot second, I kind of hope it’s from a virus and not just from a week of worse eating/movement, because that would mean there’s absolutely no margin for lifestyle error anymore in my life, and that would be RIDICULOUS.)

The tiny bit of extra walking this morning was because as I was approaching my house, I saw two kids run over to our Little Free Library. I took a detour so they would have a chance to look without me scaring them off. :)

Fast, slow, and upside-down

Wednesday: Yoga in the Park, 1 hour
Thursday: Walk 1.2 miles
Friday: Walk 1.2 miles 

I’ve kind of been swept up into being “busy,” which is not my preferred mode, but here we are for at least another week or so. Plus some of the work of this week was putting together a bid for a contract that would REALLY consume my life for the next 11 months. Not sure if I’m hoping to win it or not, tbh.

But did you notice how I kept doing the slow morning walk despite the work increase? It’s actually a really nice addition to my life, particularly with an audiobook at hand. Someday when our landscaping is done I hope to swap that for a morning putter about the garden and greenhouse, but this is very pleasant for now.

Also…I bought something interesting from a person on Facebook Marketplace: one of those yoga headstand benches. I was once able to do “real” headstands but always thought one of these would allow me to do other interesting poses as well. Now I just want to get back into headstands, but at any rate I’m very excited to have a cheap one.

Me in the future (left)

An opportunity to prioritize

Tuesday: Walk 1.2 miles, yoga 25 minutes, meditate 10 minutes

My typical morning self-care/puttering-around has ballooned into like a four-hour production. I’ve recently added a walk, some meditation, a little cooking, and some Achilles rehab to my pre-work activities, which already included reading, coffee, cooking breakfast, doing yoga, checking out the garden, taking vitamins, etc. Honestly I would love to add painting/drawing/crocheting to the list of morning fun, but I do have to work at some point.*

Also I was just informed that I have a boatload of work incoming next week, so I really can’t continue spending so long on non-paying activities. I’ll have to figure out what’s most aligned with my New Life Plan and go from there.

*For the money, not the satisfaction, particularly. I have concluded that at this stage in my life I could very happily putter around all day and still stay quite busy.

Tiny vent

Monday: Walk 1.2 miles, weights 20 minutes, meditate 10 minutes 

I started my day with learning about an editing mistake I made last week, and that is a CRAPPY way to kick off the workweek. I know logically that I can’t be 100% perfect all the time, but that is still my expectation for myself—as well as the general expectation of my clients—and it’s the one thing I ABSOLUTELY HATE about my job. 

Just to be clear, I really like editing and I really like working from home and I really like my clients. But it is so annoying and frustrating to have a job where the standard is perfection. I mean, I know I’m not a brain surgeon and there was nothing on the line here but…a typo…on the internet. Still if anyone knows of an editing gig where people are looking for about 90% accuracy, would you let me know? 

Because in grade school I got used to seeing “exceeds expectations” on my report card, and that is literally impossible in my current job.

Some insights from the “fantasy success story”

Saturday: Yoga 30 minutes, meditate 10 minutes, walk 1.2 miles
Sunday: Yoga 30 minutes, meditate 10 minutes, walk 1.2 miles

It’s absurd how little I can walk before my Achilles start complaining, but it seems important to do at least this 1.2-mile down-to-the-park-and-back walk. In fact, I wrote out my “fantasy success story” last night, focusing mostly on what I “did” and how I “overcame obstacles” (yeah, it feels embarrassing and I will not be sharing it at this time). But one of the things I found myself writing was: “I think the important breakthrough I had was realizing that I didn’t need to have my Achilles 100% better in order to start walking (slowly, gradually) again.”

That little gem just popped out of my brain unexpectedly during the exercise, but I think it’s valid. I’ve tried not walking at all, and my Achilles just got worse. I’ve also tried walking tons as if nothing was wrong, and my Achilles also just got worse. But little tiny slow walks don’t seem to matter much either way. And even though I know I can do all kinds of other exercise and movement, I just think walking outdoors is uniquely important for human health, and some has to be better than none.

Another thing I wrote about was that I taught myself to LOVE cooking, so now I’m wondering how exactly to go about that. My first thought was that maybe I could try to make my food “pretty” and take pictures of it. 

Breakfast

Unfortunately 1) it wasn’t that pretty and 2) it’s LESS satisfying because it’s just more work. Some other ideas I have are:

• music always playing while I cook
• count the number of different plants I eat in a week and make a game of trying to keep the number really high
• weekly meal prep night with M.H.
• find a cookbook that makes me excited to try new things?
• positive affirmations???

Help?

Fake it till you make it

Friday: Rest

I’m pretty sore and my back feels funky from lifting weights yesterday, so I decided it was time for a rest day. (The plan is no plan: Push myself when I can and rest when I feel like it.) 

I have been using the Thumper a lot. Sometimes it seems like it’s helping, and sometimes it’s more of the usual—my Achilles hurt at random times of day and ache on random nights. All the muscles in my calves feel a bit bruised from the massage. As I recall, that’s usually the point when Dan the Physical Therapist would double down on causing me pain, but I’ve decided to take a BIT more gentle route while still continuing on with it. Another useful thing is that after I massage for 10 minutes, I always take a few minutes to stretch, which I hadn’t been that good about previously.

I’m just staying positive: This IS going to heal, and I AM going to get my weight (and therefore blood pressure and cholesterol) down. Hey, remember when I wrote myself a “fantasy race report”* to prepare for my Ironman race? I wonder if I could do a “fantasy success story” of how I got my health back and injury rehabbed, maybe written from the perspective of 12 months from now. Hmm.

*The actual fake race report is no longer online, but you would find it boring anyway.

Exercising as planned, mostly

Wednesday: Yoga in the Park 1 hour
Thursday: Weights 20 minutes, meditate 10 minutes

Yesterday I went out the the garage again with a damp rag and a husband who knows how to do things. I wiped my bike down, we located the doohickey and the tire pressure recommendations, and he hooked up the air compressor. But…the air compressor is dead. Damn. Got excited there for a second.

The weight routines I have been doing (sporadically before; definitely more regularly from now on) are from a YouTube channel called “Lift with Cee,” designed for “women over 40.” As a total beginner physically but an expert based on past lifting experience, I deem them perfect for me. They can be easy, but there’s lots of room to grow.

Yoga in the Park is great—I keep running into new friends I’ve met in the past year or so. The weather has been perfect, too.

Will she or won't she (ever get on a bike)?

Tuesday: 30 minutes yoga, 10 minutes meditation

I actually semi-thought about going biking today. I tried on two pairs of bike shorts (they didn’t fit, plus they had that weird crackling thing that happens to stretchy fabrics when they haven’t been touched in 12+ years). So I put on regular shorts, went out to the garage, located my bike shoes and helmet, dusted off the bike (cough), and located the air compressor. I could not locate the little adapter I needed to actually inflate the tires, though, nor the writing on the tires that tells you what to inflate them to.

So I reasoned that that was enough for one day (haha) and went downstairs to do some yoga instead. Which was great except that I was coughing a bit from inhaling all the dust on my bike (this is true but also a metaphor). During yoga, I caught myself worrying about all the things I couldn’t do very well, so I decided to start noticing instead of all the things I COULD do well. For example, my hamstrings are very flexible, I know all the poses that are being called out, I have all the equipment I need, my shoulder is fully rehabbed from a softball incident, my spine has a lot of mobility, and so on.

The percussive massager thing (hereafter called the Thumper) seems really useful. It really dug into some tight spots in my calves, and I wasn’t sore the day after using it, so I might get even a little more aggressive with it.

I also got five hours of work done yesterday with most of the company having gone and am planning on five more today. That may not get me totally caught up, but at least I feel like it’s under control again.

A start

Sunday: Rest (and eat)
Monday: Yoga, 35 minutes 

I yogaed this morning to the point where I both worked up a sweat and wondered what on earth has become of my fitness. There are so many things I could do two years ago that I can no longer do. I honestly think I could use nothing but yoga for a while as a tool to get in much better shape. That sounds fun, but I think it would also be smart to lift some weights, and I need to do at least a little biking while the weather is nice. The current weather would be stupid to waste, honestly.

The family activities this weekend were so much fun. Every time I turned around, there was someone I hadn’t seen in five years or more. But this morning, M.H. and Mik both went off to work early, and I freaking CHERISHED some quiet time alone in the house. It may take months to fully refill my introvert tank.

Oh, ALSO! I was talking about Achilles tendinitis with my aunt, and she asked me what kind of stuff my physical therapist (Dan the Physical Therapist) had been doing for it. I mentioned a percussive massager, and she said, “You know you can get one of those for under $50 at Costco, right?” Naturally, I did not, and naturally I now own one for $49.99. I’ve now watched one YouTube video about how to use it on your calves and Achilles and I am eagerly awaiting it to reach full charge.

Interlude from partying

Thursday: 2.5-mile hike
Friday: Round of frisbee golf
Saturday: Rest

Just trying to get in the habit of writing my “workouts” down. The family event weekend is in full swing, and I am eating horribly but having a great time. In general I’ve noticed that the gluten and dairy and stuff doesn’t really hurt me in the moment—with the major exception of cheap pizza, which leaves me pretty bleah for the next 12 hours. After eating four slices for dinner yesterday, I woke up last night with a bone-dry mouth, a desperate thirst, and my app indicating that I had been snoring “epically.”

Almost everyone goes home Sunday, so things get mostly back to normal after that, except for the large backlog of work that’s building up.

Wherein nothing can stop me from doing yoga in the park

Wednesday: 30 minutes restorative yoga

I mentioned before that our library is sponsoring a free weekly outdoor yoga class all summer, which is fantastic except for two instances now (and counting) where the instructor simply doesn’t show up. This time I decided to make the best of it and do yoga in the park anyway. One other person was willing to stay, so we used my Down Dog yoga app and just did the practice it generated for us.

That was a good solution—I got a nice stretch, met a nice lady, and left feeling chill instead of bitter about having wasted part of my morning.

Also: I got my first item to report in terms of exercise for my newly reimagined training blog! But from now through Monday my life is 100% either work or family activities, both of which I will have in abundance.

Theory shot all to hell

I got the results from the blood test ordered by my new doctor, and generally things are good, but it sort of destroyed the low-hormone hypothesis I have been working from. I was assuming estradiol (estrogen) was the key ingredient missing from my life, but it is actually high, not low. So the way I see it, I really have no options left but to 1) go back to perfect eating in a few weeks when life gets back to normal and 2) exercise, exercise, exercise! 

I know there’s no downside to that plan, really. In fact, in a way it will be fun to turn this into an exercise/training blog again. I know I am starting this time from negative zero, but I also know that it’s pretty fun to notice and record improvements in fitness. I just this moment decided that the first step is to get my bike in working order so I can get some movement that way, since walking is currently way more difficult than it should be.

My other big goal is to LET GO of the anger/anxiety/angst caused by the recent family drama I alluded to earlier. It’s out of my hands anyway, so there’s no reason to let it affect my sleep and stress levels. So maybe…meditation?

By the way, I don’t know if I can realistically start any kind of New Life Plan until September, but I can definitely take some first steps.