Weight: 267.7 lb/121.43 kg
Exercise: 2.59 mile/4.17 km walk (5:07am–6:01am, 🌤️73ºF/22.5ºC)
Mood: Great
Food: TBD Calories
- coconut iced coffee
- Happy Belly SF Pink Lemonade
Weight: 267.7 lb/121.43 kg
Exercise: 2.59 mile/4.17 km walk (5:07am–6:01am, 🌤️73ºF/22.5ºC)
Mood: Great
Food: TBD Calories
I feel inspired this morning. I didn’t get enough sleep, but I still woke up feeling great and ready to do all the things! I’ve been focused heavily on poetry this month and it has me feeling very hyped for new projects, and I even got some writing in the other day. I can always write. But I have been busy with other things and so my writing has been pushed to the back until I’ve settled somewhere. That is a trap I’ve fallen for before. There is no settling. Life is always chaotic in one way or another, but it is a choice to deny myself expression. So, I resumed the writing I should never have paused.
My pace for the entire 3.39 mile walk this morning was under 20 minutes per mile! That was incredible. Once again, I did at times feel like I was power walking like a suburban mom on a Wednesday morning, but most of the walk felt fine. And breathing never became an issue, but a brief exception when a car drove by and I was dealing with some dust for a few minutes. Otherwise, my lungs seem the best they ever have. My VO2 Max number has sort of plateaued, but I just need to keep doing what I am doing; hopefully it moves along soon.
I’m starting to get used to the slower rate of my recent weight loss. I had been discouraged that it was slowing down, but when I started I knew that would happen. It’s actually a good sign to not be dropping 3 to 5 pounds per week. Weight loss at that rate was a sign that I was far too overweight. I seem to be at 1 to 2 pounds per week, with an occasional outlier of 4 or 5. If there’s something I could switch up to increase that, I’m just not all that interested in exploring it. I like how I’m eating, I like my exercise routine, I’m drinking a lot of water, and most nights I’m sleeping well. I don’t really mind this pace because everything is feeling so great.
[Walk #95]
Weight: 265.6 lb/120.47 kg
Exercise: 3.39 mile/5.46 km walk (5:07am–6:14am, ☁️71ºF/21.5ºC)
Mood: Excellent
Food: 2260
Calories
I woke up at 4:50am, but I didn’t get up for my walk right away since it looked like it would be rainy and I thought I’d let it pass first. I should have just gotten up and done the thing. I prefer walking as early as possible and it never did much more than drip here and there, which was still happening when I gave up and decided to get started.
Brent (my older brother) finally got an Apple Watch, and of course on the first day he used it he got in a 5 mile walk. I’m not sure if he is being competitive. He knows I do 2 miles every morning, but if he is then he forgot that I am not competitive at all. My m.o. has always been to compete enough for you to feel like your win was justified, but I’m not interested in beating you at whatever it is. If my walks make Brent walk a little more than me to show me up, then I stay that is great. In that scenario, I am doing what I can to help.
I still haven’t figured out an afternoon workout, but I could just be doing more walking in the afternoon. It’s too warm for that at the moment unless I go ahead and join a gym. I don’t want to lose myself though; I fear a little that a gym environment would so take me out of the world as to make me start not knowing who I even am. Of course, nobody said I can’t still do my morning walks outside. And nobody said a gym is even required. When I belonged to one before, it was motivating because I didn’t want to waste the money each month, so I’d go just enough to make it feel like I wasn’t doing that—3 or 4 times a week. I think I feel the same now. It could also be a goal for getting down to 250 pounds—that’s only 17 pounds away. That would also give me some time to decide if I can really afford it.
[Walk #94]
Weight: 267.0 lb/121.11 kg
Exercise: 2.57 mile/4.14 km walk (5:31am–6:25am, 🌧️73ºF/23ºC)
Mood: Great
Food: 1568 calories
The wind blew like an hyper child this morning. There were gusts that caught me by surprise almost enough to cause me to lose my footing. I love the wind, but something about the warm air moving that quickly unnerves me a little bit. I think it’s possibly just the knowledge of the extreme heat to come, or maybe there is something inherently mischievous about warm winds, a sentience I can perceive. I prefer a bit of cool air rushing at me.
During my walk I could hear the scissortails chirping in the field on the south side of the road, and my instinct was to say to myself Oh! the scissortails are serenading me on my walk. But then I remembered Alfred Russel Wallace in Papua New Guinea. He had seen the many species commonly known as birds of paradise and remarked:
“I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course year by year of being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness—to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance in man’s intellectual development; and their happiness and enjoyment, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation of the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less intimately connected.” (from The Malay Archipelago, 1869)
I thought of that and how these Texas birds of paradise have no use of me, no urge to sing for me. In fact, on many mornings they might wish I would not disturb their courtships, and they would be correct. They are a decent enough example of a bird that is not necessarily harmed to a great degree by the presence of humans, but neither are they particularly helped. I’ve adopted the image of a scissortail as part of my own business because it is a part of the place where I live, a native part of the ecosystem—evolved to thrive here, and I have a lot of respect for that. So, it’s lovely to hear them chirp to one another at dawn, but I should know my place and stay in it.
My pace continues to improve. During the second mile of this morning’s walk, I was just under 20 minutes per mile, which is my quickest yet. I was stomping down the street for sure, but I never felt like I was overdoing it or racing. I just felt confident in my stride and walked as quickly as I was comfortable. I went to Brush Creek Rd & back, an the only issue with that route is how flat it is, the flattest of my paths. It’s hard to get my heart rate up consistently on the one, but I didn’t have that issue this morning. I thought I had; the strong winds kept my shirt dry, so I was surprised when I finished to see that my heart rate was about the same as yesterday’s when I was just drenched in sweat. That quick pace probably helped.
Protein shakes. What do I do with a protein shake. So, Justin doesn’t love vegetables as much as I do, so an easy way to address that has been to add protein shakes to his daily meal plans. He seems to enjoy them. But I’ve been trying to have them as well (because I won’t ask him to do anything in a meal plan that I won’t do) and I cannot seem to get them to taste quite right… or maybe this is what they always taste like and I just can’t handle it. I enjoy premade things like Soylent or similar products, but mixing protein powder just doesn’t do it for me. I want it to do more for me though, so I’m going to keep trying to find ways to make it work.
[Walk #93]
Weight: 271.2 lb/123.01 kg
Exercise: 2.09 mile/3.36 km walk (5:05am–5:50am, 🌬️75ºF/24ºC)
Mood: Excellent
Food: 1615 Calories
I woke up with a lot of gusto. My lethargy yesterday had been the result of allergies after stirring up a lot of dust on Saturday, so I was glad that my body had calmed down about that and I would be able to get on with it today. Fortunately, there isn’t really all that much dust stirring to do; we did that job already. Most of the rest consists of things that have sat in closets or cabinets, and it will all be relatively dust-free.
My gusto created a wind at my back and while still on the slow side, my pace was very good for me. I was watching a video over the weekend by John Glaude (ObesetoBeast) in which he was reacting to a video by Anna O’Brien (Glitterandlazers) on her quest to run a marathon. In her video she was disappointed to find that while she had been training, she was technically walking or power walking, but only is short bursts even breaking into a jog. She was not running at any point. John made an excellent point, and one that I needed to hear at the moment. It is not necessary to run. It is just fine to walk. I’m paraphrasing. What I appreciate about this, and what he briefly explains, is that running is not a superior form of walking. They are two different types of exercise. I did actually know this, but I have found myself recently falling into a trap of thinking that if I were better at this, it would be a run. And that thinking isn’t helpful.
I am interested in learning to run, but not as a replacement for my walks. I’ve grown fond of my walks and in fact I look forward to them so much that I want to extend them. I’ve already started to make plans for how life might look in a future where I can walk maybe to a park or in a park, and stop midway to do my journaling. I love that idea. Where I currently live, there aren’t places to stop. It’s for the same reason that my walks tend to be limited to 2-3 miles; that’s the distance from the corner where I live to the next street and back. I’m not quite to the point where I don’t need a bit of a rest after that distance, but as I am back home by that point I just get on with my day. If there was a spot to sit just at Yost Rd, I might try going another mile, doubling my total for the day. In town, that will be more of an option, and one I wouldn’t mind taking.
Prompted by my brother’s concern, I’ve been a little concerned about my heart rate at night. I don’t know if I would have thought about it much if he hadn’t been talking about it. I routinely drop to about 38 or 39 BPM, usually just as I’m starting to wake up. Whether it is a function of my body waking up or I am waking up in response, I cannot say. But heart rate is something I’ve been working on in general. I don’t have the luxury of being able to see a doctor at the moment, so I have to treat myself as carefully as I can. One thing I’ve been trying, and which seems to be working okay, is to do a bit of cardio just before going to bed. I don’t think it needs to be as strenuous as my morning walks, but a few minutes of jogging in place or a few minutes on the exercise bike. I just want to get my heart rate up to about 120 BPM for a little while. I do pretty well with my recovery rate, so it returns to normal pretty well, but on the nights where I have done that—so far—I have not dipped below the 40s. Of course, that could all be a coincidence and maybe I’m grasping at straws. But I’ll keep experimenting. In those final moments before bed, I’m almost always watching YouTube, and I can easily just get up and do some exercise while I watch my video.
The other metric I’ve been really interested in increasing is VO2 Max, which steadily increased from 27 April to 11 June, but seems to have stalled out. This morning it had decreased which was pretty frustrating, but I have a lot of allergy issues and I’m sure that is part of the problem. I’ve become complacent with my allergies, rarely feeling the need to take anything at all because it has felt so much better without the 150 pounds I recently lost. But it is possible I’m not allowing myself the full potential of my lungs by denying myself the relief of allergy medications. I do hate being dependent on a medication, but sometimes things just are what they are.
[Walk #92]
Weight: 266.0 lb/120.66 kg
Exercise: 3.17 mile/5.10 km walk (5:17am–6:22am, ☀️73ºF/22.5ºC)
Mood: Excellent
Food: 1490 Calories
I have a lot of guilt related to Dad. When I first came to Oklahoma from Alaska, I was in decent enough shape. I had spent a few years in a retail job where I sat down most of the day, but I still needed to be able to be active. The first few years, I was able to do a lot of things, from planting a garden that failed to mowing the lawn every week to grocery shopping. But my health was negatively affected by a cut I got that became infected and I let it be the excuse that let me stop being active and gain a lot of weight. And when I was just starting to recover from the worst of it, Mom passed and that sent me into a long depression. And it was doing the same for Dad, only 300 ft away in his own house, but he might as well have been halfway around the world. It’s true: everyone grieves alone. When Dad’s health started to decline, and he was diagnosed with cancer, I was a very sick person. I had no business helping to take care of someone else when I could barely take care of myself. Dad wanted me around more, but it was hard to walk and hard to get down the steps. It took a lot out of me to go up to his house that I limited those trips, which understandably bothered him. I had not yet identified myself as the problem. My nephew had, and I know he had a lot of issues regarding me. I can’t blame him; he was correct. I just wasn’t ready to hear him. I could have made the changes I needed to make to help out more—help out better. Would that have meant Dad would still be here? Probably not. He died of issues stemming from his cancer, and I doubt I could have lost enough weight to make his cancer go away. But I could have been there more, and I do feel a lot of guilt about that.
I wanted so much to get my walk in this morning before 6:00am. It was an arbitrary goal, but I did make it. And that was including my ridiculous distraction trying to get a good video of lightning bugs. I’m convinced they know when they are being recorded; they would all be lighting up in chorus, but as soon as I touched the red button there was darkness, except for one slowly blinking—a crumb for me. That took me out of my walk enthusiasm initially, but I had only just started, so I was able to pick it back up an finished at 5:59am.
My legs are noticeably smaller than they used to be, but plagued by issues. I think they have a tendency to respond negatively to hormonal changes. Some days, they’ll be just covered in rashes or in pimples or they’ll be dried out. I never know what kind of day it’ll be with my legs, and I’m really interested in not thinking about them all the time. I don’t know if that will ever be my reality, but I would love that.
I’ve been making my housemate Justin’s meal plans, and it’s going fairly well. He’s not 100% in it, as he still will add this or that to the day, which is honestly fine, but he’s definitely the type to give himself permission for a big thing since he was allowed a small thing. It’s a different thing doing his meal planning because he thinks of himself as being on a diet which will eventually end. I’m trying my hardest to make it so sustainable for him that he won’t want to stop, but he does love fast food french fries and if I don’t work them into a meal plan he will just end up eating them anyway. For next week, I will try to incorporate that. What I am trying to stress to him is that he can eat whatever he wants, but he needs to track that. If he wants to mindlessly eat, he needs to eat a different way. It’s perfectly fine to do that as well, but fast food is not on that plan.
Dad didn’t understand nutrition, and probably intentionally. I never saw him as old, but he seemed to start thinking of himself that way. He was never good at eating healthy foods honestly, but in the last few years he seemed to think it no longer mattered what he ate. He was happy to just eat all the junk food and did. But that also isn’t exactly true. While Dad’s actions indicated a sort of indifference to his own life, as well as his frequent statement “I’m ready to go see your mama,” during his first meeting with the oncologist at the VA, things we very different. It was August 2022, and he had just received the cancer diagnosis. When we went into the meeting, I fully expected him to not want to fight, but he told the doctor he wanted to live and wanted to do whatever necessary to treat it. Lifestyle changes are hard, and I was hard on him during those last few months. But I also wanted him to live. In the end, he couldn’t outrun cancer like he had hoped. In the end, it didn’t matter if he had gorged himself on étouffée and apple pies. But I can’t help but wonder how things might have been different if I had lost this weight ten years ago. Would my parents have tried out my way of eating? Would they have been healthier as a result, or was it just too late to turn back the clock? There are so many things we can never know.
[Walk #91]
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