Working Out is Working Out

 Got a tiny weight drop on the scale finally, which is always a relief after no gains or losses for two weeks. I didn’t doubt that I was making great choices, but since I’m pushing 40, I am aware that hormones may be up to some tricks with progress. Like I’ve said before though, I am aware of what can cause weight loss halts and don’t get discouraged. My body needs to heal from stress both mental and physical along the way and weight doesn’t just want to melt off simply because you’re overweight. The body doesn’t just shed it all in relief, not until you can prove it’s not temporary. It takes a while to convince so many chemical processes to trust it’s a good idea.

Anyways, I have a few projects I want to try to knock out this week. Small ones but things to help me engage in creativity without a huge commitment right now. I still have to finish wiring the lights in a diorama I have finished. I received a template for a doll sized purse that I want to try out. I also bought some resin to try my hand at making some doll eyes.

Working on Endramena and Maxim, my two favorite dolls, is always a maybe. He needs armor and she needs a lot of jewelry and embellishments. Both need their hair finished. As much as I want to see them finished, it’s also very intimidating since these are dolls I envisioned years ago when I started drafting their characters and also a book that I have not finished and published. The pandemic weighed heavily on me, but it was ignoring my health that ultimately led to a wrench in creativity. As I restore my health, I want to ease back into good habits so those intimidating projects are just a maybe right now. I’m pushing the smaller bites for now. The big projects will get to swallow me completely again someday but I can’t afford to have it take too much of my focus while I’m struggling to build the stamina to see them through. 

Not to sound like a broken record but this will always be a challenge with my ADHD. Unless I am very mindful, I can’t catch or tame an obsession and it will take away my concept of time or energy or self-care. Impulses can easily override common sense. Plans can easily be dashed to pieces so I work best with flexibility. A life style change has to have interesting variables to remain in my routine. Routines that feel too rigid are often abandoned. The three solid years I spent obsessed with writing and publishing, I don’t really recall any of it. It felt like a handful of weeks and still mesmerized me that I did all that in so little time. And not at all surprising that I simply walked away from it for a while.

It always comes back. Writing is one of those obsessions that always returns. Drawing is the same. Crafting too. I would love to develop mastery in the traditional sense but it’s almost impossible to tell my brain not to bring in a new interest. It always convinces me that it will only enhance my other skills. It isn’t wrong. I am usually even better at drawing after not drawing for years. It’s never about practice and application but life experience and perception. My brain always retains what I never lost passion for.

So I will chip away at the small curiosities while I plug away at a healthier me. My mental state also benefits from the physical changes. But unlike last time, I will not allow a physical health obsession to lead to creative drought, then trade places later. From the onset, I am minding every day to integrate both aspects. So that when it’s time for an obsession, it is already a habit to mind the other necessities.

I do have some doll heads to paint as well. Those can be a pain, if only because I have to do a layer, seal it outside, let it dry and set, paint more, etc. However, since I can’t just sit the whole time, it’s actually a good habit, using both focus with creativity and movement to take breaks. The biggest wrench is being both in the mood and having good weather for sealing. Much trickier!

Healthy Journey

 Getting right to it, this isn’t the first time I’ve become dedicated to weight loss and lifestyle changes. And really, until you’ve been doing it consistently for a few months, you’re never sure it’s going to stick at all. The beginning is so full of discouragement; hunger, moods, the days where you can’t move because you pushed too hard exercising.

When you keep a log, which you should in some form, you truly get to see where things start to change. It’s not always going to be in the form of weight loss or perfect habits, but it’s there. In fact, I haven’t dropped any weight in two weeks at this point and I’m not freaking out. Why? Because, in the past two weeks, I’ve not only hit every daily minimum goal I set on FitBit, but on more than half of them, I doubled or even tripled those minimum goals and in some cases I have been meeting larger goals that I wasn’t getting close to before.

I’ll elaborate on this more. FitBit does a system called Active Zone Minutes, which I consider my primary goal every week. Divided up into a daily goal, it asks you to get your heart rate in one of three Zone categories: fat burn, cardio or peak. I hardly ever hit peak times but those also aren’t mean to be prioritized and don’t ‘count’ for more than cardio. You get one Active Zone Minute for a fat-burn heart rate and two for cardio. On my slowest days, fat burn can account for all or about 3/4 of my AZM. On my most intense days, it can be flipped to where cardio covers 3/4 of that balance. Essentially, when you reach cardio, you need less time but more effort to reach that goal.

Now, that is the most involved stat. The others that I keep on my dashboard are calories burned (which calculates both sedentary and exercise to let you know how much you’re using daily), step count (which I keep on 10K for the goal— a secondary goal that I don’t always enforce), stair count (really just how many times you go up a full flight of stairs daily), and miles. Adding that I’ve learned that my 5 mile default goal actually takes a little over 11K steps so if I’ve made the 10K goal, I can decide whether I want to go ahead and push it a little more before the day is out.

Now each day is different and I figure out what I’m up for once I get there. Strength workouts get the heart rate up faster and are shorter workouts but I’m also more likely to push muscles too far and really limit exercise the next day. They’re not my favorite days, actually, and at this point I only do them 2 or 3 days a week. If I do a strength workout, I don’t aim for 10K steps. I usually follow up with careful stretches and hop in the shower (you’d be surprised how many active minutes you can get just from that bit of hygiene— I make it a point to tack on some extra minutes by keeping my heart rate up with a shower!). 

Now cardio days are where I end up walking or jogging, going for stamina. Jogs, of course, don’t need to last as long and doing them in bursts is just as good as doing it the entire time. I’ve managed to build my endurance to where I can do a brisk jog for 20 minutes at a time. And yes, that took time to build up to; I started with 5 30 second bursts with one minute of walking in between to 5 one minute bursts and 30 seconds walking. One minute went to two and then three and then I actually jumped to 12 minute jog/2 minute walk twice then a 6 minute jog and 3 minute cool down to finish. Every time you push, you think there’s no way you can do more. So you go back to a spot that isn’t as much but was hard at the time... and suddenly that place is actually too easy! So, it’s not a setback to say I’m not pushing today. You’ll get a huge boost in confidence when you can do far more than you could a week ago. That’s the kind of measure you will need sometimes.

A little off track there, but a jog can cut the 10K step count down to a little over an hour where a brisk walk will take an hour and a half (and yes, you can still get fat burn minutes with a two hour stroll; you never need to stick to only moderate or vigorous workouts to maintain healthy goals).

So while I would LOVE it for the scale to drop, I have been consistent in my diet and workout. Some days I have been eating less than I should, but not in any alarming sense; I’m still getting at least 1500 calories but my tracker tells me that’s about 500 calories short of where I need to be... and eating less than you should can sometimes trigger protective mechanisms in your body. You might be losing fat still but inflammation from digestion or muscle recovery will keep that number up. I can visibly SEE I’ve lost weight in my face, chest and shoulders as well and I do build muscle faster than the average bear...

I don’t do measurements but I know from experience that those numbers are... weird for me. I am able to lose 60 pounds and not drop a single pant size. Most of my weight, at any time in my adult life, just likes to sit in my hips, thighs and ass. I’ll lose inches everywhere else and that will go nowhere. It can be motivational for some people to take measurements but, for me, it’s pointless. There isn’t actually a goal or a one-size-fits-all goal for that one unless you’re a model that has to be a certain size to fit clothes and... I’m a stretchy clothes kind of gal. I don’t even know my damn number size because everything I buy has a variable letter. So that one is just not a priority; I’m looking at variables to measure health and that one just doesn’t.

I won’t delve into diet too much here. I eat a combination of food I enjoy and sometimes it’s just a healthy choice. I don’t hate it but I’m not gushing over it either. To have a good relationship with food, it works best for me to moderate but indulge. Restrictions are not happening and sometimes even substitution is a bad idea. If ‘healthy pizza’ is a joyless piece of cardboard, it doesn’t absolutely nothing to satisfy the craving. You’re better off eating a slice or two of the good stuff than crying over that edible (?) frisbee of despair.

I know what I’m in for. While it’s possible to reach my weight loss goal of 150 by the year’s end, that’s super ambitious and may not be realistic. And once I get there, it’s not a finish. I must still maintain an eye on exercise and diet or that weight can slip right back on. I’m not going for speed this time. I want these habits to be sustainable now so I’m not starving for the freedoms I took away later. The weight loss goal will have perks too though. I’ll get to embrace those minimum goals of activity and eat more on maintenance (not a LOT more, but maintenance calories are still more forgiving).

I try not to look too far ahead. You have to embrace where you are and not look too wistfully at what you aren’t. You have to find what you’ve accomplished when you feel stuck and find comfort in personal progress. Stop telling yourself where you need to be or coming down on yourself when you’re not where you wish you could be. For most of us, doing everything you should do for certain results just doesn’t happen. It’s not necessarily because you didn’t do enough. Sometimes you’re doing too much but you’ll have to wait to see the benefits. (Also, don’t make it a habit to do ‘too much’ because it’s NOT a healthy habit and could lead to disease and disorder.)

And this last bit goes for people like me; try not to obsess on it. You will absolutely need to prioritize more than diet and exercise. You will need to get your mind onto other things you enjoy. You will need to consider diet and exercise as a part of a full life and not turn it into the central existence. If, like me, you are doing this to help build creative energy and stamina, then like with exercise, you’ll have to test your creativity regularly too. Last time the weight crept back on, it was because I had denied creativity and fell back into it obsessively after depriving myself of it too much. If you don’t make it a PART of your life, the parts that go missing can overwhelm  it later.

You might need to reflect on diet and exercise a lot in the beginning, but as you find your stride, you will need to learn to trust what you’ve learned more. Ease up on it and make sure you’re keeping your goals and priorities balanced. A healthy lifestyle is only as healthy as your overall well-being.

Time to Ramble!

So, it’s been over a month since I even thought about blogging last and I have no idea where to start. I am fully vaccinated at this point and I keep buying ‘just one more doll’ to the point where I’m certain my bedroom will eventually be entirely filled with dolls and cat toys at some point in the future.

I have been very sporadic and unplanned when it comes to projects. Even my weight loss plans are completely impulsive. Consistent but still impulsive.

In the three months since I’ve started, I’ve lost a little more than 12 pounds. For the past two weeks, I’ve been fluctuating between 208-210 pounds. I’ve been drinking over 100 oz of water a day, working out from between 18 minutes to two hours, and eating between 1200-1500 on most days, no more than 1800 on a cheat day.

Two hours of exercise though; sounds like a lot but those are just days when I don’t want to do cardio or strength and opt for a more relaxed but still demanding 10K steps a day. I know some of you are saying, whoa, I can math and 8 eight-ounce glasses is 64 so why over do that too? Well, I do sweat and workout more so the minimum recommendation is an ounce of water for every 2 lbs of weight. Say I’m 210; that’s 105 oz of water. And yes, at first, it makes you pee a lot but eventually your body doesn’t flush it so fast and maintains more of it for sweat and increased activity. As for diet and lower calories, I don’t restrict what I eat. I can eat garbage but that puts a huge dent in the calorie count so most days you will make better choices just so you can eat more. And sometimes I’ve maxed out the calories I’m hoping to stop at but hunger hits with a vengeance. I keep Quest protein bars on the ready. About 200 calories, but they are balanced on the macros and full of nutrients so it doesn’t throw me into a huge binge/craving mode.

Let me add, there is no non-frustrating way to lose weight. I’ve tried it all and you really start to crave all that weight gone just so you can get those more satisfying maintenance calories. When losing weight, you’re aiming for 500-1000 less calories than you’ll use in a day just to drop one or two pounds in a week. I’ve gone super strict to try to drop weight fast but what usually happens is that my body will panic and I won’t lose or gain at all for about a month. Plateaus from hell if I get impatient. I tried intermittent fasting and even three day fasts and I can’t be around people because I’m so miserable, moody and sick those days. I’ve tried workout challenges and schedules and there always comes a workout day that I end up skipping because I simply loathe doing it again.

So this time around, I’m doing the slow crawl. No stupid restrictive diet, no set workout schedule, no panic bingeing or pushing my workouts to the point of pain. It means that I might not make my weight goal until the end of the year or into the next, but it also means, I won’t drop a ton then plateau for a long time repeatedly either. I do not weigh myself every day anymore either. I try to only do an official weigh in every Friday and whenever I’m just curious. Daily weigh ins were pointless and didn’t help at all. My weight will rise and drop several pounds for no apparent reason I can’t correlate. It’s probably hormonal or metabolic, who knows, but they don’t match up with how much I eat or exercise. I’m doing a lot better by just listening to my body and not turning any aspect of it into an obsession. Obsessions tend to burn me out too easily once they pass, but if I do this with too much ambition, I end up dropping every good habit because I’ve so long deprived myself of any joy in life.

I need this to be sustainable so that when I go into maintenance mode eventually, I don’t overindulge to feed the famine. I need healthy habits to be sustained so that I have the energy and motivation to meet my creative needs. This has to be the trifecta of mind, body and spirit or it will get put aside once again.

It’s never as simple as calories in and out. While that is a measure for the loss of fat, it does not factor in muscle gain, how your body stores fat (and how quickly it panics to hold onto it), your metabolism, any genetic predisposition or the possible existence of disease that may hinder weight loss or cause weight gain. Be wary of any ‘health experts’ that come with one-size-fits-all solutions or even those that can ‘tailor your diet and exercise’ based on a few simple questions. If you’ve tried quite a bit with food and exercise and are frustrated, skip the weight loss systems blowing up your social media and get a doctor to run some tests. Make sure you know where you are with blood pressure, blood work, deficiencies or disease before taking more drastic steps. You can end up wasting hundreds or thousands of dollars for little more than a placebo. If you know what your specific deficiencies are, get those medications and supplements specifically. 

It’s really tough for some of us to lose or gain weight. I’ve learned that while it’s tough for me to drop a lot of weight, that I also maintain and burn for a long while before the weight creeps back on. I did not gain a pound after I slipped back into old habits for a full six months. Unfortunately, two years later, it crept back on fast. My body is really slow to realizing a big change has occurred. While that sucks for good habits and progress, it’s on my side against bad habits. I just can’t let it slip like I did this time.

No drastic goals here. Just want to drop to 150 lbs and maintain it below 160 from there on out. I will not need to monitor as much as I am now forever. There will come a time when I’ll only weigh in every week or two and I won’t count calories as strictly. I can focus on minimum exercise needed rather than weight loss deficits. Slowly, frustratingly, but determined to do this sustainably.