Posted onJune 16, 2017|Comments Off on Heat and Hormones (or Not Letting Cravings Take Over)
I’ve written about the heat from time to time on here. I don’t know why each year when it gets hot I seem surprised by it and how my body reacts. I know that my body swelling is a reaction to the heat and I understand that I shouldn’t be stressed about it. But knowing about something and feeling that way are totally different things. So of course, as soon as my body starts swelling (and my clothes stop fitting as nicely), I start to stress out.
And knowing that I’ve gained a little weight lately doesn’t help me stay rational about this. I’m working on getting my weight loss back on track, but it’s not easy to do. There are so many things that feel like they are working against me and sometimes I forget that it’s not always all my fault. There are things beyond my control at times and I have to try to manage them the best that I can.
I do have air conditioning now, but I do limit how often I use it. It’s not too expensive to run, but I also don’t want to feel dependent on it. I use it when it gets really hot and stuffy inside my house and once it feels cool and comfortable again I’ll either turn it off or adjust the temperature setting. But I really don’t need to limit it as much as I do and I have to tell myself that it’s ok if I get a bit spoiled with the air conditioning. I’m hoping that I will never feel like I always need it on and end up spending a ton of money on electricity (which is unlikely to happen with my current energy-efficient a/c), but there is a lot of middle ground between how little I’m using it now and using it all the time.
The other thing that I’m dealing with (and is probably being made worse with the heat) are the food cravings I’ve been having lately. I’m still adjusting to having hormone fluctuations and haven’t had to deal with cravings this way since I was in high school. Since I was on continuous birth control pills, I didn’t get a period and didn’t have PMS. The cravings are so weird to me and I’m working on trying to distinguish the difference between cravings because of hormones and cravings because of my eating disorder. I need to treat each type of craving differently and it’s not easy to know what to do.
I’m working on finding good and healthy options for when I do have hormonal cravings. It’s not easy when you want something that you know isn’t good for you, but hopefully I can figure out what will satisfy my body when I feel like I need something. This is all new to me, but hopefully once I’ve been birth control pill free for a year it will normalize. It’s only been 6 months and I know a lot of people told me it could take a year or two for things to be stable. While some things stabilized right away, I have to keep reminding myself that other things might not have normalized as quickly and I have to allow myself for an adjustment period.
I hate that I feel like I have these issues every single time that it gets hot and I wonder when it will stop feeling so crazy. I’m letting myself have these feelings because I know that things aren’t always in my control and I shouldn’t try to avoid feeling however I’m feeling. But it does annoy me that it feels like the heat and the cravings have ganged up on me right now and are making my life extra difficult.
But as all the other struggles I’ve written about on here, I know this is temporary. I have things in place to help me out this time. I’m in a better mental space to deal with the issues and I know what I can do to work on them. It’s not easy and I have to accept that it might never become easy. It’s all about getting through the tough times so that the next time they happen you are better prepared. I haven’t had to deal with the heat and hormone fluctuations together yet, so this time it might be a bit tougher. But that just means that next year should be better and that is what is helping me deal this time.
Posted onJune 15, 2017|Comments Off on A Universal Evening (or Checking Out The Castle)
One of the fun bonuses for having an annual pass for UniversalStudios is that they do some preview events for passholders from time to time. And pretty soon after renewing my pass, I got my first preview event invite. This time, it was for the upcoming light show that they are going to be doing on the castle in the Harry Potter section of the park.
When they originally announced the new light show, my friend Michelle and I realized that it was going to be starting after our passes were blacked out for the summer. So when we got the preview invites, we jumped at the chance to go and signed up! We had a viewing time of 9:20pm for the show, but we figured we’d just go to the park after we were both done with work and have some fun before the light show.
We got to the park around 5pm and found a pretty amazing parking space (which doesn’t always happen at Universal since they aren’t as great with their parking lot as Disneyland is). And since we were both getting a bit hungry for dinner, we decided to make a stop in CityWalk before going into the park since the food is a bit better there.
We went to DongPo Kitchen where we had gone once before. They have amazing green beans that we were both kind of craving. We decided to get those again along with some chicken and pork belly and had a pretty awesome meal!
We then headed toward the front gate of the park where we had to check in for the preview event and get our wristbands. We also got coupons for 20% off a purchase in the park. I didn’t think I would be purchasing anything there (I’m really trying to not shop as much), but it was nice that they gave us those as a perk.
Michelle and I weren’t sure what we were going to do at the park. We only had about an hour before the park closed (the preview event only had the Harry Potter section open) and we were debating on what we wanted to ride. And as we passed the Special Effects Stage, we realized the show was going to start within a few minutes. I hadn’t seen the show in about a decade, so we decided to go in and check it out.
We were sitting on the side in the front, so it was a bit tough to see everything. But we could still see a lot and I noticed how much they’ve changed the show. It’s pretty awesome what they do now and they have real stunt people in the show doing stage fighting and lighting themselves on fire. It’s a big improvement over the old version and I have a feeling I’ll be checking it out again.
When the show was done, we only had about 5 minutes until the park closed so we had to pick one ride to do. And we figured since The Simpsons ride was right there that we would do that. The line wasn’t too bad and we got to cut ahead a bit because they were looking for a group of 2 to fill up one of the ride vehicles. And after waiting only maybe 10 minutes, we were inside the building waiting to go on the ride. I love the little digs at Disneyland attractions that they have inside there!
When we were done with that ride, the park was officially closed so we walked over to the Harry Potter section. There were 3 showtimes for the new light show (8:40, 9:00, and 9:20) and we figured we’d try to watch it at least twice. But first, we wanted to ride the Harry Potter ride which is one of my favorites.
As soon as we got off the ride, we headed outside and the light show was starting! We couldn’t really be in the viewing area since we had a different showtime, but we had a pretty great view from farther back!
And as soon as that show was done, we made our way to the front of the reserved viewing area to see the show from up close. The show is only about 5 minutes so I’m glad we didn’t really have to wait in a big crowd to watch it. It’s pretty awesome and the projections are incredible up close, but I was a bit disappointed how short the show was.
We let the crowd clear a bit before we headed out. I’m glad that we were able to go to Universal and considering that we were only in the park for about 2 hours I think we got quite a bit done. I won’t have a chance to go back for a while unless they do bonus days for passholders (which they do from time to time). But if this is my last visit for a while, I would have to say it was a pretty great visit and I feel like I got everything done that I wanted to do.
Posted onJune 14, 2017|Comments Off on Time For Some Refocusing (or I Need To Do Some Follow Through)
My life has been getting a bit crazy lately, but crazy in a good way. I’m back to my normal routine without the worry about medical issues in my head. I’m back in the dating game and while I’ve had some negative experiences I’m having fun. I’m going out with my friends and doing so much stuff that I love. Honestly, this is close to the happiest I’ve been as an adult. I think a lot of it is because I don’t care as much about what other’s think, but I also think I’m just making an effort to make me happy.
Not everything in my life is going great, but it’s pretty awesome right now. I’m taking more time to focus on the positives in my life than the negatives that might come up. But because I’m not focusing on the negatives, I’m slacking off on some things and I know that I need to work on that balance.
Some of the slacking off has been cleaning and organizing. This has been something on my to-do list for a while and I’m just not taking the time out to do the work that I need to do. And looking at my calendar for the coming days, I honestly don’t know when I’ll have the chance to do it. And because I want to do more than just a basic cleaning, I know that this is something I need to set aside the time to do.
My desk has been getting a bit out of control because I’m sitting at it so many hours a day. When I start working on stuff and don’t get to finish, I just set it to the side on my desk thinking I’ll pick it up later. But later doesn’t seem to come and some of these things have been on my desk for too long. One of the things that’s been on my desk forever has been the dry erase board that I used for my Oscars costume. When I got it, I assumed that I would be using it at my desk or somewhere else. But I haven’t done anything with it and I don’t know now if I will be using it. I just need to make a decision and do something with it.
My closet is another trap right now for me. I really need to go through all my clothes and figure out what I want to keep and what I need to toss. There are several things in my closet that are now too big for me and I don’t want to keep them around anymore. But sometimes it’s hard to let those things go because I justify in my head that maybe I could get it tailored smaller or that I might wear it baggy. But I know I won’t and I just have to let it go. There are also things that have gotten torn or just not my style anymore and I need to get rid of it. But again, this is a major cleaning and I know I’ll need to set aside lots of time to do it. I probably will need to try on a lot of stuff from my closet to do this and when I do this cleaning I also am looking at making a list of what I own so I don’t feel like I’m missing something in my closet and go out and buy it (I’ve done that before and have had to make trips to return duplicates).
And as always, I just want to clean up some of the clutter that is in my house. I keep a lot of stuff for sentiment value and I know that I don’t need to do that. I want to work on digitizing more stuff that I keep and finding new and clever ways to organize and store what I want to have. It’s a bit overwhelming to think about how much I want to get done, but I also know in the long run that this will be an awesome thing for me to do and I will probably be really happy when I feel like I have a cleaner, more organized, and happier space.
I know a lot of people who have gone through major cleanings like this have been inspired by the book “The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up”. I actually have this book. I bought it almost 2 years ago and for some reason I haven’t really started to read it. I know that I always get distracted by other books that I have, but now that I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the work I want to get done I think this might be a good time to start reading it. I’m in the middle of one book right now so I probably won’t be able to read it until next week, but I honestly forgot that I owned the book until I started to feel as overwhelmed as I am now.
I’m tired of setting a goal to work on cleaning my space and not following through with it. I need to just get my butt in gear and do it. But it’s not always easy to make a change like this when you’ve been putting it off. But hopefully soon I will find the motivation and time to get this done and I can feel calmer in my space so that my home will make me as happy as my social life is making me.
If you watched “Sex and the City”, you probably remember the episode where Carrie was broken up with via post-it note. If you didn’t watch the show, here’s a brief summary. One of the main characters (Carrie) is broken up with via post-it that says “I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.”. In the rest of the episode, Carrie is doing awesome things so it doesn’t have to be the date she was broken up with via post-it. In the end, she almost gets arrested for smoking pot, so it then becomes the day she’s almost arrested.
This is my version of the post-it day.
I hate that I’ve been writing about onlinedating so much, but it seems like the craziness just continues. And this past Thursday takes the cake. The short version of a very long story is that I met a guy on Bumble and we were going to meet up on Thursday. He said some things that were a bit odd, but when I googled him I couldn’t find anything on him at all. He had given me his last name since I give that to a friend for safety, but after he said a few other odd and a few raunchy things I thought that maybe he gave me a fake last name and I wanted to figure out who he was.
My friend Dani had been talking to me when I figured out the entire thing, and I was venting to her on the phone after. She agreed that I did the right thing and was trying to make me feel better. We decided to meet up for dinner so I could get my mind off of my crazy day. We met at my house and walked over to Rush St. The walk over did help me feel a bit better, and having an awesome meal with an amazing friend helped even more.
And while we were eating, I was talking about how this could not just be the day I almost went out with an engaged guy. I was glad we were out to dinner, but I wanted to make the day even better. So we decided to go to Disneyland! By the time we were done with dinner it was about 8pm and we drove over to pick up our friend Michelle who was down for a random Disney night. Since it was late enough, there wasn’t too much traffic and by 9pm we were already in California Adventure and planning on what we were going to ride.
We wanted to ride the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride, but there was a 3 hour line. We didn’t want to spend our entire night in line, so we decided to head over to Disneyland to make a new plan. We walked over just as the fireworks were starting and thought about watching them. But we couldn’t really find a good spot so we decided to skip it. But as we were walking we decided to get corn dogs (yes, after I had dinner) and went over to the corn dog cart. And we discovered that the corn dog line had a pretty decent view of the fireworks!
The corn dog line was shorter than normal, but it still took a bit of time. But we all got our corn dogs, sat down, and decided to cheers to making this a better day than how it had been going.
The first ride we went on was Space Mountain. The Hyperspace Mountain overlay had just ended and it was our first chance to ride the original ride in a long time. We were all so excited to be on the ride and it was just as good as I remembered it. It was a bit weird since we were so used to the Hyperspace Mountain version, but I’m hopeful that they will change up the overlays more often so we can ride all the versions of the ride.
Next was continuing on the year-long challenge that Michelle and I have going for Buzz Lightyear. This was the first time in a while that I got a higher score than Michelle, but I have a feeling that soon she will be ahead of me in our challenge.
By this time, it was already almost 11:30pm and the park was going to close at midnight. So we took a look at the wait times for rides and decided to go on the Jungle Cruise. I think the Jungle Cruise is so much better and more realistic at nighttime. And Dani had never been on that ride at night so we were excited to ride. We walked right onto the ride and the boat wasn’t even half full. It felt like a semi-private cruise for us!
And it was just as awesome as I remembered it being at night. The animals all looked real and a bit creepier than they do in the daytime.
And the jokes the skipper was making were pretty funny and a bunch of them were jokes that I hadn’t heard before.
By the time the we were done with the ride, the park was about to close so we made our way out. Even though we were in the park for about 3 hours, we got a lot done! We had corn dogs and went on 3 rides. Plus we did a bit of shopping and seeing what fun new Disney stuff the stores had.
Going to Disneyland was the perfect way to remedy the crazy day I had. This made everything feel right in my world again and I’m so grateful that Dani and Michelle were up for a random Disney night to make me feel better. I’m so lucky that I have amazing friends who are willing to be crazy with me to cheer me up. This made it totally not my post-it day but instead my crazy night at Disneyland day!
I’ve had amazing workout weeks the past few weeks. Something has kicked in that has helped me reach so many amazing goals. It’s been so great that I’ve been struggling with figuring out what new goals to set for myself. I’m still working out new goals for myself, but this past week of workouts wasn’t anything spectacular. That’s not to say that my workout week was bad, it was just nothing super special. But that fact makes it special because it’s still crazy to me that this is my normal now.
Monday’s workout was a run/row day. I still love run/row days, especially now that my running and rowing are so much better. There were 3 blocks each with 3 runs and 3 rows in them. The first block was all 1 minute all outs at 1, 2, and 3% inclines. I was able to run all of those pretty easily. We all had 150 meter rows between the runs. I did ok on the rowing, but since I was tired from the running it wasn’t close to a PR. The second block was all 45 second all outs at 2, 3, and 4% inclines. Again, I could run all of those pretty easily although the 4% run was getting a bit tough. And between each run we had a 300 meter row. Again, no PR times for me but I was doing pretty ok. And I only made it to the beginning of the  third block which was a 450 meter row. All of my running was at 5.5 mph which is my pretty standard all out pace.
Once I got to the floor, we had 3 blocks each with 3 moves. Since it was an endurance, strength, and power day we had one move representing each element in each block. That was a pretty fun thing to have. We had a lot of rowing type moves using the straps and the weights. We also had skater lunges which have been something I’ve been improving on slowly. I used to always have to put my back foot down, but now I can pretty much do them without ever touching my back foot to the ground. There were also burpees that day which are always a tough one for me, but they didn’t seem as tough as usual for me.
Wednesday’s workout was a mix of strength and endurance and it was a switch day as well. Every block was 10.5 minutes long which seemed pretty great with the switching. The treadmill was pretty much all 90 second push paces with 45 second base paces. But in the first block we were doing our push paces on increasing inclines (1-5%) and in the second block we did decreasing declines (5-1%). For some reason, running was going really smoothly and I wasn’t having much problem running at 5%. It was nice to feel like things were falling into place even if I wasn’t doing anything too crazy.
On the floor, the first block had 4 moves but different numbers of reps. One round was endurance with higher reps and then we repeated the same moves with half the reps to represent strength. For the endurance reps I was using 15 pounds weights and for the strength rounds I was using 20 pound weights. The second block had rowing in it and we had a 300 meter row. This has become such a marker for me in my workouts and I thought maybe I could do it in 59 seconds flat. I ended up doing it in 59.4 which is still great and I had to remind myself that it is still considered an amazing time for me.
Friday’s workout was endurance, strength, and power. I was a bit tired (more about that in tomorrow’s post) and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do running. The endurance block on the treadmill was increasing push paces starting at 30 seconds and going up to 90 seconds. I was able to run all of those but it was a bit tough. The strength block was 45 second hill intervals and I knew that I just couldn’t run on the hills that day so I walked that entire block. And the power block was all 90 second intervals with a mix of push to all outs. And again I was able to run all of those.
The floor was also 3 blocks but I wasn’t feeling my best on the floor. I tried to do what I could, but I was just feeling really tired. The first block was chest, shoulder, and abs work. The second block was rowing with froggers. I didn’t go that fast on my rowing but it wasn’t that horrible either. And the final block on the floor was abs and arm work.
Saturday’s workout was an endurance day, but it was a 3G workout so there was only 15 minutes at each section. I started on the treadmill and the entire time we alternated 1 minute or 90 second push paces. Between each push we had a 1 minute base pace. And I did my usual walking for the bases and running at 4.5 mph for the pushes. I originally planned on walking that workout, but for some reason I felt like I should try running. And I’m glad that I did because the running felt really good. Again, it felt pretty smooth to me and very normal and regular to me. It’s such a nice feeling and I’m glad that I had that on a day that I usually look at as a recovery day.
Next for me was the floor work where we had one long block. It was nice to have it as a long block so I didn’t have to worry too much about what I had to do. The floor work was a mix of strap rows, squats, pull overs, chest flys, and mountain climbers. The 15 minutes on the floor seemed to go by really quickly for me.
The last part of Saturday’s workout was the rower which was a bit complicated but really awesome. It started with a series of timed rows and rests. We had a 3 minute row, 1 minute recovery, 90 second row, 45 second recovery, and 45 second row. At the end of those 7 minutes, we were supposed to see how far we rowed. I was able to do about 1300 meters which isn’t that great but I had to remind myself that I had a lot of rest/recovery time in those 7 minutes so I couldn’t think about it as a 7 minute row. After that timed row, we were supposed to take that distance and take it in half and then do that as a row (so for me that was 650 meters). And to end the workout we had a 1 minute wall sit and a plank until time was up. My last monthly challenge was plank work and I’m currently in a wall sit challenge, so I thought it was pretty funny that my workout ended with those.
So like I said, this wasn’t a goal or record-breaking workout week, but I still did a lot of great stuff. And the more normal this feels to me, the better I feel about my fitness journey. I want this to just feel like any other week and not something that I have to keep struggling to push myself to do better. I do want to keep improving, but I don’t want to burn out when I’m not able to break any records.
Posted onJune 9, 2017|Comments Off on Time For Dental Work (or Maybe My MRIs Prepared Me For This)
When I went to the dentist recently, I found out that one of my fillings needs to be replaced. The filling has been in there for a long time and I knew that fillings (or crowns) aren’t forever and do need to be replaced over a lifetime. I’ve been pretty lucky the past few years. My teeth have always been a bit bad (it’s genetic) but I haven’t needed major work in a while. I’ve had lots of work done, but I’ve had a nice break and I guess that streak is over now.
As soon as I found out I needed work, my panic started. Part of that panic is because this time while they are hoping that this is just going to be a filling replacement there is a chance I will need a crown. It’s one of those situations where they weren’t going to know until they started the work and I had having unknowns in my life. But there was no way to find out what it was going to be until I had my next appointment so I tried to just deal with the sense of panic I had.
Fortunately for me, the panic wasn’t too horrible between my cleaning and the appointment to have the work done. I was panicking the day of my cleaning when I found out that there was work I needed done because that’s not what I was expecting. But I didn’t really feel panic again until the day before my appointment (and then it got pretty bad the day of my appointment). I know how bad things have been for me in the past and I just didn’t want that to happen again.
But I was trying to think about all the changes that have happened in my life since my last appointment for major dental work. I’ve been meditating for over a year now and that has been helping me stay calm in the moment (although it doesn’t seem to help the panic from building up before). That has seemed to help before with my MRIs.
And speaking of MRIs, I’ve had so many MRIs since my last dentist appointment and each of those have involved 2 needles (the blood work and then the IV for the contrast). I have been hoping that with all of those needles over the past few months that maybe my issues with needles has become less of a thing. I know that I’ve still been having blackout moments with needles in my recent blood work and IVs, but it has gotten significantly better. And since my incidents at the dentist were usually less than what I dealt with at the hospital, I was hopeful that this appointment and the needle would go a lot smoother than I feared it would go.
The day of my appointment was pretty tough. My appointment was right after I was done with work and I spent my entire shift in a panic and feeling sick. It was a sense of impending doom that I used to feel before a regular cleaning. I hadn’t had to deal with this feeling for a while, so it threw me off a bit. Fortunately, right now is the slower season for my day job so I didn’t have to help too many customers. I was still able to work, but I know that I wasn’t at my best while worrying about my dental appointment.
Once I got to the dentist, the panic was feeling pretty unbearable. I didn’t take my panic meds since they don’t really work that well when I take my eating disorder medication. And to me, right now it’s more important to manage my eating disorder than it was to stop some temporary panic. And I knew that as soon as the work started, the panic was going to go away and I would be fine.
The staff there tried to keep me distracted and calm while we waited for the dentist. They were asking me about what was happening in my life (I was telling them some of my crazy online dating stories), but I was still just anxious that the shots were coming and I wanted to get it over with. Everything in the dentist office looks so scary even though I know most things there aren’t anything that could hurt me.
Once the dentist came back, we got to the shots quickly. He does numb my cheek up with some gel before the shots so it does help a lot. And with the first shot I didn’t totally black out. But with the second shot (which I couldn’t actually feel because I was already pretty numb), I did black out like I have with my recent IVs. But it’s still a huge improvement over the last time I had to get shots at the dentist.
The last few times I’ve needed shots like this, it was for major dental work. Those appointments last quite a while and you have the option to watch a movie while they work. I should have known this would be easy when I wasn’t given the option to watch a movie but instead just had to wear protective eyewear. And this appointment ended up taking no time at all!
The drilling of the part of the old filling that had to come out took less than 5 minutes. Then they filled it back it and had to use the tools to dry it. Then it was only some checking of my bite and before I knew it I was sitting back up and rinsing my mouth out with mouthwash. The entire procedure (not counting waiting to get numb) was under 10 minutes.
I felt so silly when it was done for freaking out as much as I did. Then again, I had no clue it was going to be this simple since it seems like whenever I have more than just a cleaning it is pretty extreme. And I’m lucky that I have a dentist that is super on top of things since this could have been much worse if we didn’t catch it as soon as we did.
I still think I’m going to always have my panic issues at the dentist, but I’m glad that they are getting better. I’ve proven to myself for a while that I am doing much better with the cleanings. Now I’ve proven to myself that I can do ok with shots and bigger dental work. Hopefully I won’t need more major dental work for a while, but I know that there will be more in the future and I feel more prepared for it after this successful appointment.
I’m getting close to my blog’s 5 year anniversary and that’s so crazy to me! I’m at almost 1300 posts and I’ve been able to be consistent with the posts since I started almost 5 years ago. And maybe it’s because of the upcoming anniversary or my consistency that has made a lot of people come to me recently about my blog and how I do it. It’s funny because I still feel like I need to ask others for advice and now people are coming to me for advice.
I still consider myself a small time blogger since I’m not out doing the crazy events that so many bloggers get invited to. I don’t have thousands of readers every day and I’m not making that much money off of my blog (I think in total I’ve made around $100). But maybe me being a small blogger has made me more approachable? I’m not sure. But because so many people have helped me in my journey, I’m more than happy to help anyone who comes to me. It’s all about paying it forward to me.
The number one thing that people have been asking me is how to start a blog. And my only advice is to just start. I knew I was going to start this blog for a while before I wrote my first post. I was terrified about what to write and if anyone would care to read what I have to say. I’m so glad that you all do care about what I have to say because it helps me feel more confident about putting myself out there. I wish now that I had started it when I got everything set up instead of waiting. The sooner you start blogging the sooner you feel comfortable about blogging.
And the other thing that people ask me about all the time is how I come up with ideas to write about. And this isn’t really an easy one. There are a bunch of days that I have nothing to write about and it takes forever to think of what I could possibly have to say. And when my editorial calendar is empty, I get worried that I won’t know how to fill it. It does make it easier now that I do my fitness recaps on Mondays and I’ve got some ongoing posts like my monthly challenges. But as an example, next week the only post I know I’ll be writing will be my Monday workout recap. I have no clue what I’m going to write about the rest of the week.
But I recently posted something I got through Shine Text that was so relevant about blogging for me.
When I saw that in Shine Text, it got me to reflect on things. But instead of things being for novelty, they are because I know they will make a good blog post. When I get invited to an event and my editorial calendar is empty I feel like I have to go. I know I’ll need something to blog about and going to an event is the perfect way to be inspired. And I’m so lucky that in LA there are so many fun events that I am able to go to. It’s still tough sometimes for me to make the time to go to events, but I’m working on it.
I have become a more social and outgoing person and it is partially because of this blog. But I don’t know if I became more social and then got the courage to blog or if I felt like I had to start blogging and then I had to start finding things to blog about. I’m not sure what came first, but I’m so glad that I have both things in my life.
I’m so much more well-rounded now and I’ve found new things that I love because I took a chance with going to an event. I’ve become really gutsy in trying new things and those new things bring other new things to me. It’s a cycle of awesome for me and I never knew that this would make me so happy.
Coming up on a big blogging anniversary does give me time to reflect on things. But I probably wouldn’t have thought as much about how I’m doing more now if I hadn’t seen that message in Shine Text and if friends hadn’t been asking me about blogging. Sometimes things come your way because you need them. I’ve been in a bit of a blogging slump (sorry in advance for any boring posts in the next week or two) and this just reminded me on how far I’ve come from 5 years ago when I was terrified to write my very first post.
I know that I just recently wrote about online dating, but I wanted to write about it again. I still think it’s so crazy how I was having no luck with dating for years and now it’s coming much easier to me. I’m still not dating anyone seriously, but I’m having fun meeting new people. And the fact that dating is fun again for me is a novelty that I’m not used to. I’m glad that this is a fun experience for me since it hasn’t been that way before. I’m due for lots of good things in my life and I’m glad that dating is now one of them.
For so long, dating meant putting up with someone who I lowered my standards for. Or dealing with someone who didn’t treat me the way I deserved to be treated. There are many dating regrets I’ve had in the past and I have tried to learn from them. I’ve always assumed that this is due to low self-esteem but never thought too much about it. But I’ve had some dates lately where I am able to see that I don’t want to put up with someone like that so I leave and I couldn’t figure out why I’m able to react like that now when I wasn’t before.
I’ve been doing some soul-searching and having some honest conversations with friends and I think that being open and honest has helped me make the most of this dating adventure. I’m finally realizing things that may have been affecting me and my life without me really knowing about it.
When I was a teenager, there was someone in my life who told me that I was unloveable. They told me that people didn’t care about me and that nobody would ever care about me. They felt this way about me because I was fat. This person was someone who should not have treated me this way, but they did. When this person told me all this, I knew that they were crazy and I tried to ignore it. I didn’t tell anyone else in my life that this happened for years and just tried to put it behind me.
But now that I’m having some more reflection in my life, I think that maybe this person did end up influencing me and my beliefs about myself. Maybe I have been tolerating people who didn’t treat me the way I deserve to be treated because deep down I’m terrified that I’m unloveable. Maybe I’ve clung to something because I’m scared that the guy is the only person who will ever like me. Maybe I have let rejection affect me more because I am afraid that this would be the last guy that I would date. I know that those things aren’t the truth, but it’s tough when there’s something deep down in your subconscious mind.
I’m trying to remember that if one guy rejects me that I like, it doesn’t mean that everything is over. It can feel like that sometimes when I will meet a bunch of people one week and then nobody the next week. But just when I think that I will never match with someone else online, I match with someone and have a fun first date! I’ve never been a big dater before so I’m not used to this pattern. But I’m trying to realize that this is just the way it is, no matter who you are and what you look like.
Even though in the dating world I have to fight this voice in my head saying I might be unloveable, I’m so lucky that I don’t have to fight that voice when it comes to my friends. And having great friends while navigating the online dating world is so important. I sometimes need to rant after a really horrible date or talk to someone about a really great date.
And because I know how important it is to be careful, I have a friend who I send details of who I’m meeting before I meet them. I usually send her their name, phone number, where I’m meeting them, and a screenshot of their profile. I joke that this gives her what she needs in case something happens to me. But I really haven’t felt unsafe on any dates which is good too. In the past, it seemed like my bad dates outweighed the good ones. I don’t know if I’m being picker now or what, but most of my dates are now good ones. And I have met guys who I would like to keep seeing but that just hasn’t happened yet. But “yet” is the key to that sentence and I’m trying to stay hopeful.
I’m sure that having the voice in my head saying that I’m unloveable is part of the problem in my dating life in the past. I just never realized that before and let it keep affecting me. But now that I’m able to do more reflection on myself I’m glad that I have realized this and am now able to make some changes in my attitude so I don’t have to let this voice in my head control things from now on.
Posted onJune 6, 2017|Comments Off on Another Weight Loss Challenge (or Getting Back On Track)
This past week, a new weight loss challenge got started at Orangetheory. This challenge is only for the month of June and there aren’t too many requirements for it. Mainly it’s a weigh in at the beginning and end of the month and I have to do a certain number of workouts (it’s either 15 or 16 but I know I’ll get that done). There will be a prize for the winners, but they haven’t announced what that will be yet.
I’ve done a couple of the weight loss challenges at Orangetheory and they are a fun challenge to do. I’ve placed in one of them, but usually I’m not able to do that because it’s based on a percentage of weight loss and I have more weight to work with. But I like that it’s a challenge with everyone supporting each other and that nobody is too competitive. Everyone is excited for everyone else and I am just as happy seeing someone else win as I was when I placed in second.
While my focus right now hasn’t been on weight loss, it should be again. I was trying to lose weight before my liver surgery and I didn’t do as well at that as I had hoped. And after finding out that my surgery was cancelled, I stopped stressing about losing weight and got focused on getting my life back to normal. It was important to get my life back (and I’m honestly so much happier now than I was before), but I need to focus back on my health again. And yes, I’m aware that losing weight can totally be related to getting my life back. It just hasn’t been that way in my mind recently.
I think that my exercising is pretty close to what I need it to be right now. I probably should be doing more on my days off from Orangetheory, but working out 4 times a week is pretty great. My trouble is (and pretty much always has been) food. I hate how hard dealing with food can be for me. I’ve said it before that I wished that my addiction issues were with something that I could avoid every day and not something I had to deal with 3 times a day. But that’s the hand I’ve been dealt and I just have to work with it.
I had lost quite a bit of weight around the time I found out I had the tumors and managed to keep most of it off. But it has slowly been creeping back up on me over the past month or so. I haven’t gained all of it back, so that is a victory for me. But I’m up about 10 pounds from where I was and I want to get back down to that and to continue to lose more. Ideally, I want to get to my goal weight/goal size and stay there. But I also know that this journey isn’t a linear one and can easily have lots of ups and downs. That’s how my journey has been for pretty much my entire life and I have no reason to believe that it would be any different now.
So while I’m doing this weight loss challenge this month at Orangetheory, my main goal isn’t necessarily to win. Winning would be awesome and I’d love it if that happened. But I can’t just compare myself to other people like that. What other people are able to do shouldn’t affect what I can do. And I just need to focus on myself and use this challenge as a personal one. If my personal challenge ends up winning, great. But if it doesn’t I don’t want that to affect how I feel about any weight loss that I have this month.
Hopefully, things will be able to get back on track this month and I will be back down to (or lower than) the weight I was before. I still have some big weight loss goals that I’m trying to accomplish and I know that I have to take baby steps to get there. The first step is to get back to where I was and keep going. I actually reset my weight tracking app to start at what I weigh now so I don’t have to see the recent weight gain. Seeing that gain was actually causing me to feel less motivated and even though the number is the same now, I feel much better about it. I feel like I’m starting fresh and able to kick some butt again.
Maybe in a month I’ll be sharing with you all that I placed in the weight loss challenge. That would be awesome. But to me, what would be even more awesome is if I could tell you all that I lost the weight I gained recently and am still continuing to lose. That is the best thing that I could hope for right now and I really want that to be true.
I didn’t realize this going into this past week of workouts, but this week was my 3 year anniversary at Orangetheory! It’s so crazy to think how 3 years ago I had my first class that was so tough I could barely walk the next day. I’ve come so far in those 3 years and I’m just so grateful that I was given the opportunity 3 years ago to try a class. I never thought I could fall in love with a workout so much, but here I am 3 years later loving things more and more and wanting to push myself further and harder.
Monday’s workout was a 3G because it was a holiday. Holiday workouts are always like that, so I was prepared going into class that it would be a 3 group workout. I started on the treadmill and it essentially was a 15 minute run for distance. It really was more like run 1.5 miles, walk, and then run more; but I knew that I couldn’t do 1.5 miles in 15 minutes so I looked at it as 15 minutes for distance. I had never run for 15 minutes before, but I’ve done close to that so I figured I should go for it and see what happens.
I did the first 12 minutes at 4.5 mph and tried to kind of go into my head and just think about anything other than running. I went through my schedule in my head and did some blog post planning and just kept running. Then for the last 3 minutes I was bumping up the speed a little bit each minute just because I wanted to see how far I could get. I didn’t really have a real goal in my head for how far I wanted to go, but I figured 1.125 miles sounded nice to me. And of course because of how stubborn I am, I was able to do more than that and ran the entire 15 minutes without stopping! Sorry for the blurry picture, I was so out of breath at the end of the run!
Next, I went to the rower where we had a 2,000 meter row. We don’t have 2,000 meter rows that often, but I do have them when I do the Dri-Tri so I’ve done them a few times. I was not expecting to PR on the row since my PR was during the Dri-Tri when the rowing was first so I wasn’t tired. All I wanted to do was row the entire time without taking a break. And I wanted to see if I could be under 9 minutes. Those seemed like good goals considering I had just come off of a 15 minute run.
Again, I just tried to get into my head and think of anything other than the rower. I was daydreaming and just trying to keep a steady rhythm on the rower. It was tough not to go really hard at the beginning since I do that a lot on my sprint rowing. But I started slower than I’m used to and was able to stay pretty steady the entire time. I didn’t take a break, did it under 9 minutes, and I was only 12 seconds slower than my PR! That was totally unexpected!
The floor work that day was pretty varied and I focused more on form than anything else since I was so tired from the running and rowing. We had chest presses, deadlifts, pullovers, strap work, and plank work. By the time class was done, I was feeling on top of the world from all the awesome work I did!
Wednesday’s workout was a power day. Every block was 4.5 minutes long so I decided to challenge myself to run everything including my base paces. With the blocks being so short, I would only have to run for 4.5 minutes at a time before having a walking recovery. It would be more running than I’m used to, but the length of each run wouldn’t be too bad. I used my normal push pace speed to be my base pace and only increased the speed about .2 mph to be my push pace. That’s not as much of a difference as you are supposed to have, but I didn’t think I could do much more and still come back down to a run. It wasn’t easy to not have the walks that I’m used to, but this was a good test for me with intervals for 5K training. Maybe I can do 4 minutes running/1 minute walking next time?
The floor was also 4.5 minute blocks and each block had 2 moves in it so it went pretty quickly. We had lots of chest and plank work in those mini-blocks and we had rowing in the last block. It was a 100 meter row and I wanted to see if I could PR. I had thought that my PR at the time was 17.4 seconds so I wanted to beat that. I did the rows in 17.6 and 17.5 seconds and was a bit upset about that. But then when I looked at my rowing record tracking, it looks like my old PR was 17.6 seconds so it looks like I did PR after all! I’m not as good at tracking my rowing records as I am with my treadmill ones (mainly because I don’t always have my phone with me to take photos on the rower) but I’m working on getting better at that so I can focus on those records now too.
Friday’s workout was an endurance day where we didn’t switch between blocks. I didn’t try to do anything too crazy with my running since I had 2 very run heavy days already. The entire workout on the treadmill was basically 90 second pushes with bases in-between. The bases were between 30 seconds and 2 minutes and I did walk then for each one. I kept my pushes at my normal speed but worked really hard to sprint for the all out paces that we had (I got up to 6.7 mph). In the 29 minutes we were on the treadmill I got 1.95 miles done. So I was pretty much at my 2 miles in class target.
The floor work was in 2 blocks and the first block had chest presses and squats which I was able to do with 2 20 pound weights. We also had Spiderman planks and rowing. The rowing was 300 meters and all I wanted to do was be under a minute. My first attempt was 59.7 seconds and my second attempt was 59.2 seconds which was a new PR for me! I’m only able to take a few tenths of a second off of my rowing PRs which is tough for me since I’m used to huge PRs on  the treadmill. But any improvement is a good thing and I’m starting to get used to seeing only minor improvements. The second block was mainly strap work and abs which was a nice break and I was able to slow down my heart rate a bit and just focus on my form.
Saturday’s workout was a strength day and a 3G class. I had decided even before knowing it was a strength day that I would be walking. But it’s always easier for me to walk on strength days. It’s funny how I’m thinking of a day where I only walk as a recovery day compared to even a year ago where my recovery days were on the bike. It’s funny to me how much I’ve changed when I was so sure that I wouldn’t be able to do it.
The treadmill was pretty normal for a strength day. Lots of incline work and I just tried to increase my inclines a bit more than I’m used to. I was doing a lot of my work at 8-12% incline and kept my speed steady at 3.5 mph. I didn’t get my heart rate up as much as I would have liked, but again this was a recovery day and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do as much as I normally do.
After the treadmill my group went to the rower where we had increasing rows with bicep curls on the rower and lunges off of the rower. The first row was 300 meters and I had no goals in my head. I wasn’t even worried about getting it done in under a minute. It ended up being around 1:06 (I’m not totally sure) but that was fine with me. The bicep curls on the rower were a nice recovery and I was able to go really deep with my lunges because I could steady myself on the water tank of the rower. My next row was 350 meters and I don’t really remember what time I did that in. My last row was 400 meters and I had an idea in my head that I want to be able to do this in 1:30. That’s really fast considering not long ago I was doing 300 meters in 1:30. But since it was my last row I went all out and ended up being pretty close to my goal! Now I’ve got something to work toward and I’m excited to see how long it takes me to get those last few seconds off.
On the floor, we had a longer block that had a lot of things that I was able to do with 20 pounds weights (lunges, deadlifts, single arm thrusters) and we also had a bit of plank work. And on the floor we ended with a 3 minute core blast where we had regular crunches, static crunches, toe reaches, leg lifts, and a 1 minute plank hold. That 1 minute plank hold wasn’t too bad, but I think that’s because I’m used to the super long planks from my last monthly challenge. I’m so happy that I’m seeing the results from that challenge in my workouts.
Overall, another amazing 4 workout week for me. I didn’t know it was my OTF anniversary until Thursday, so I think it’s awesome that I was able to accomplish some great challenges and PRs not even knowing that I was celebrating my time at OTF. I’ve accomplished so much in the past 3 years, and even more in just the past year. And I can’t wait to see what my fitness journey will look like in the next 3 years!
Dealing With Heat And Humidity (or I’m Very Lucky The Pandemic Didn’t Happen A Few Years Ago)
