#fitember2022

[lucy-sweats-love]

Using images from the end of the first to show this one off because I was anticipating this questions yesterday :P

As I said in my intro post, my big desire this month is to increase my mind-body connection and learn to listen to my body a bit better. Historically, I’ve tried shoving my body into the box of what I think it “should” want/need. This isn’t really a specific or measurable goal, and it’s hard to call “listen to my body” a habit because it’s more like a constant conversation you have with yourself.

I’ve been using my 12-week planner since August 22, but primarily just the 12 week overview and the weekly pages. The stickers on the overview page don’t actually mean anything other than just a count down, and the weekly view is more of a log than a journal although I do add gratitude or what I intentionally did as self care that day too. This doesn’t really say how connected I was- just how well I fit into a prescribed box.

So my new daily habit is to add in journaling.

I want to continue to do my general objective logs, but I also want to use the daily pages if for nothing else than for the little “thoughts” and “grade” sections at the bottom. The goal is to document how much I tried to listen to my body that day. How was I feeling? Did I try to check in with myself? Did I ignore any cues? The grade is a way to give myself a concrete measure out of a subjective feel. How did I do overall honoring present and future me? It’s still subjective, but at least it’s measurable!

(Fitember challenges hosted by @btchthatfightsbears)

Edit: today I learned that my phone autocorrects to grace instead of grade which, especially as a former chemistry instructor (weird to call myself that), I find really indicative of my approach to learning?? Give yourself more grace.

[healinghealthy]

Hey, my name is Dominique, I’m 35.

I have two amazing kids, with quite a big age gap (11 years) and I’m in a relationship the most wonderful husband. I’m about to start my MSc in psychology this month which I’m very excited about.

I have a pretty good life all things considered and I constantly remind myself of how lucky I am, because I know there was a time that I would have given anything to have the life and love I now have.

I started this tumblr in 2014 to document my fitness journey but obviously I’m not doing that right now. You can go back and look through this tumblr. I used to be really fit and active, and I have tried my best to keep that up over the years even with fatigue. But I know that I cannot keep doing that because it was ruining my health and I stopped making progress.

I have Chronic fatigue which I’ve had since 2011, it’s steadily gotten worse over the years. After finishing university and going through many years of stress. So from 2017-19 I had a massive crash and could barely function.

It’s taken me this long to start to feel better and more able to start working on myself again.

I still do pole fitness every two weeks because that’s all I can manage and it helps me feel more like my old self when I do it. But it does mean I have to make sure I rest a couple of days before I do it and a couple of days after (pacing. ) I also over the summer done a bit of swimming. But apart from that I don’t really do anything else “fitness” related and I would say that I am definitely not a fitblr anymore. 😅

So mostly my life now consists of pacing myself, which means trying to listen to my body instead of pushing through and making myself sick. I’m having a flare at the moment and I’m sick with a cold. But most of the time pacing is really beneficial and has allowed me to reclaim some of my life back and do more than I could before with my limited energy levels.

As far as mental health goes I’m on the waiting list for a counsellor, because I also have bad anxiety and OCD. But I am slowly working on my mental as well as physical health, because I believe that both of those can be linked.

I’m really really bad at challenges and I might not keep this up. 😅

But I guess I’d like to use this challenge to start incorporating some more movement back into my life wether that is yoga, continuing swimming (it’s something that doesn’t seem the flare my CF) and also try and figure out what a “normal” life might look like for me now and wether I can continue to improve my CF.

[lucy-sweats-love]

Fitember Friday Check In #1

The first 8 days of September simultaneously flew by and dragged on. To recap, my main non-SMART goal is to develop a stronger connection with my body, listen to its needs, and provide for its needs, not just checking a box. I also am working on replacing “I feel fat” with how I am actually feeling, because “fat” isn’t a feeling. Regardless of how I feel, my body is my body, and the fat I have on my body is the same, and my actual emotions and physical sensations deserve to be properly acknowledged. To facilitate this, my actual traceable habit is journaling and giving myself a “listening grade.”

Throughout the first 8 days of the month, I journaled every night! Is that worth a point? Idk. Average grade is around an A-, which is good all things considered. I didn’t restrict fully at any point- though I did have periods where I was so busy I didn’t actually realize I was hungry, or I intentionally didn’t drink water when thirsty so I wouldn’t have to get up to pee. I think this is somewhat normal? Not ideal, no, but as much as we’d like to have the time freedom to do everything our bodies need when they need it, other aspects of life sometimes take precedence.

In other Fitblr-related news, I did (almost) all of my planned workouts. I say almost kinda loosely is because, while I have cardio listed on all Saturdays and Sundays, I don't actually plan to do cardio both days. If I want to go hiking on a Sunday, I probably won't do cardio on the day before because I want my glycogen tanks to be fuller and my legs to feel fresher to support a better hike. It's a LOOSE plan. Other than that though, I've done all my actual planned workouts. I forgot to put check marks in for my workouts the last couple days, but I did them! In these first few days, I:

went to PT once (yesterday- usual day is Tuesdays but had to switch it up for my physio's vacation)

strength-trained 5 times: upper body x 3 and lower body + core x 2. Today is another lower body day.

spun 5 times for a total of 2 hours and 37 min and 37.1 miles

hiked once to a new waterfall

I'm also almost ready to submit my primary applications to med school! My deadline is October 1, and frankly many people have already finished their secondaries, but... I didn't know I was going to apply until mid-July, didn't start getting letters in until mid-August, and I'm still waiting on a couple since some of them didn't realize they needed to submit to both application systems. Not directly related to fitness or health or whatever, but it's still huge for me!

[lucy-sweats-love]

Fat is not a feeling. It isn’t a physical sensation either.

Describing your “negative” body/mind experiences as “fat” reinforces the idea that *fat* is the problem- that the problem is how we look instead of how we actually feel or what we are capable of. It links our concept of “fat” to the concept of those negative experiences. Thanks to the way cognition works, the more we link those concepts, the stronger and more salient the connection, which means the faster and more automatic those negative thoughts about fatness come.

And this isn’t just to us- it’s to everybody around us. There is the idea that if you say “I feel fat” to a person with more fat to you, it implies to them that their level of being is negative as well. If you, a thinner person, “feel fat” when you really feel unattractive, what does that say to our fatter friends? That we find them unattractive? That they should view themselves as unattractive? That even if they were in a body our size, it still wouldn’t be good enough for them? Even if we are careful not to physically speak the words around our fat friends or colleagues, entertaining and dwelling on these thoughts makes us less kind, empathetic, and understanding of them. By strengthen connections between negative experiences and “fat,” we also strengthen our implicit bias against fat itself- and against people we view as fatter than ourselves or our “ideal.”

Linking negative experiences and sensations with “fat” has another consequence: we start to unlink the physical and emotional sensations with their true name and call everything “fat.” You stop realizing that you’re feeling judged- you just “feel fat.” You stop realizing that you’re bloated, or tired, or fatigued- you just “feel fat.” This disconnection from our body grates at the trust we have in ourself and keeps us from being able to truly listen to our body’s cues and make changes to give it what it needs.

So throughout the month, I want to stop myself from describing any sensation as “feeling fat.” I will replace it instead by listening to my body’s cues and finding new words to describe those experiences, some of which may be:

I feel fatigued.

I feel frustrated.

I feel sweaty/warm/sticky.

I feel sore/inflamed/pained.

I feel judged.

I feel uncomfortable in my clothes.

I feel my body rubbing.

I feel bloated.

I feel stuffed/over-full.

I feel unattractive

I feel undesirable.

I feel tired.

I feel insecure.

[healinghealthy]

When I’m having a flare (a flare meaning extra tired and unable to do normal activities,) the only thing I end up doing is mindlessly scrolling my phone for hours. Because it’s easy, because it’s a free source of dopamine and makes me forget how bad I’m feeing in that moment.

By it doesn’t help me feel any better really, it doesn’t recharge me, it’s just something passive I can do when I’m feeing crappy.

But it not only lowers my mood, it also makes me feel even worse about not being able to do very much worth my energy levels and then worse again because I haven’t done anything and I’ve “wasted time.”

Then it takes weeks to get back to better phone habits again because that’s just the nature of addiction, sadly. I have to work backwards slowly and wean myself back into not needing it as much.

Next time I have a flare, instead of just mindlessly scrolling.

I’d like to watch shows instead, things I enjoy like animals or anime. Even re-watching a safe show, if starting something new feels like too much.

I definitely want to break the constant scrolling! I’ve just come out of flare and my usage is up again, so I’ll be posting my usage here every week so I can get some accountability. 😬 I hate how much I use my phone so please be nice about my usage numbers… 😅

Social is mostly messaging my best friend @pressing-onward and browsing Facebook (I hate FB..) or tumblr (which I still love.) I did feel happier when I came off Facebook, but then I’d never have any contact with anyone apart from my real life friends. But I’m thinking that might not be such a bad thing. 🤷🏻‍♀️ if people wanted to know what was going on in my life then they’d message 🤷🏻‍♀️ (or stalk my tumblr 😂.)

I want to get it down to the 3h mark again that was much better and I felt much better. As you can see even 5hrs a day adds up to 40ish hours a week. It’s just too much.

I’m really grumpy and trying to hide to go on my phone again. I know it’s bad for my mental health but in that moment it’s quick dopamine and feeling distracted from how exhausted I feel. But I know it’s very unhealthy and I don’t like who I am when I’m on it to much.

It’s something I want to work on not only fro my own mental health but also so I can be more present and happier for my children and my partner.

[lucy-sweats-love]

I have so many methods! My husband is a huge tech person and thus I too have a lot of tech stuff…

I have an Apple Watch that tracks some things, such as my sleep, activity/steps,

For sleep, I use the app Pillow for more detailed tracking.

For workouts, I use Workouts++ and Fitbod for tracking.

For water, I use Hidrate! I have a smart water bottle that tracks water intake and syncs to the app.

For other tracking, and to consolidate info, I use my Goodnotes journal/planner. I currently track things like my mood at wake up, energy levels, if I take my two prescribed medications, etc. I’ve started to use it for brief journaling, focusing on how/if I tried to listen to my body during the day, and giving myself a grade for the day as well.

I think in general this is working fine for me. I like having the apps because they can track things a little more seamlessly through the day, clearing up mental energy and space. I put everything into my Goodnotes planner so I can see everything all in one place. Putting everything in my planner/journal can feel a little cumbersome, but it also has been a good day-end wind down activity to help get me ready for bed.

[lucy-sweats-love]

09.01.2022 // to everything, there is a season.

I know fall hasn’t technically started, but it’s a new month, and as we enter the last third of 2022, I’m allowing myself to treat this as a new season, too.

I’m still feeling a little emotionally raw from physical therapy on Tuesday. I want to leave it in the past, but the body recovers as it recovers, and so does the mind. Yesterday was a good rest day, although it had its own bumps (like I ordered a chicken power bowl from Taco Bell and it came without ANY vegetables and very little chicken), and I went in today telling myself I would just take it one step at a time.

Which I did. In retrospect, it was a fairly productive day! I:

went to the dentist for a filling

grabbed coffees for me and Husband at a local coffee shop

packed up and shipped out a care package for my sister

did 7.5 miles of light spinning on my stationary bike (while watching a teen TV show- probably my favorite ‘guilty pleasure’ genre)

did my light “try not to hurt my back” upper body workout

took a really calming bath with a bonfire bath bomb, candles, and tarot.

The workout was alright. Nothing that I felt great about. Since it wasn’t like, a nature hike or in a forest with a creek nearby, it didn’t feel restorative. Nothing heavy because back spasms, which my body appreciated but my brain is like “k, is that it?” But, I do feel marginally emotionally better and more capable, which I didn’t feel at all after Tuesday’s PT. I’m glad I did it and know my body will be thankful- I just wish I was in a different place, I guess. It didn’t help that I started to feel a little nauseous after finishing my workout, even though it was so light, and I struggled to find food my body actually wanted.

The bonfire bath bomb was pretty fire tho ngl. It wasn’t too smoky, but felt warm and crisp at the same time. Really reminded me of late summer to early fall time and bonfire nights with family or friends. Sometimes I yearn for those still.

I don’t usually share my tarot on here, but it’s been a while since I did a real spread and this one just contributed to the restorative and fall vibes of my night. I adapted a new moon type spread as today feels a bit like a transition or start of a new era itself. For those curious… L to R: what can I let fade? What idea is growing within me? What can I create going forward? The two on the bottom just kinda jumped out. I’m still thinking about the draw.

As I lay here now, I think about all the things I wish I had gotten done today- emails I need to send, essays to write, I still need to take CASPER or however it’s stylized, etc. It’s okay that my plans changed as my body and mind needed something different. Today I needed time to reconnect with myself and with others. Tomorrow I will finish getting med school stuff in order.