Weight: 268.0 lb/121.56 kg
Exercise: 3.38 mile/5.44 km walk (5:51am–7:01am, 🌙➡️☀️65ºF/18.5ºC)
Mindfulness: journaling (throughout the day)
Mood: Great
Food: 1550
Last night, I knew I would want to sleep in today, and I did just that. I periodically woke up this morning and just decided to go back to sleep. It wasn’t a lack of motivation; I knew I would eventually get my walk in, but I wanted to make sure I was caught up on sleep. While I’ve been waking up naturally around 5:00am, I have found that I’m a little sleepier in the afternoons than I used to be, and much more so than I would like to be. I think I’m just not quite getting enough sleep. According to my watch, I am averaging 5 hours & 56 minutes of sleep over the past month. That’s down a full hour from Spring and over two hours from January. It’s pretty similar to the amount I was sleeping at the end of last summer. That might be fine, but I am a lot more active than I was last year. A whole lot more. I just don’t know that six hours cuts it at the moment. But my brain doesn’t seem to know that and so I just hop up each morning. I could attempt to solve the issue on the other end, going to bed an hour earlier. I already get such a hard time for being in bed by 10:00pm. If I’m already getting it, I might as well go for another hour.
I worked up quite a sweat during my morning walk today. I have been trying to get my heart rate up, and some mornings I have only very limited success doing that. Today was going better, and I was just drenched in sweat as a result. My heart rate during walks is all over the place, but the number does look like it is trending upward. The whole thing did make me think about workout clothes I would like to get. I have been saying from the start of my weight loss plan that once I have gotten to 250, I need new clothes. I’m 19 pounds from that goal, but my clothes being baggy is starting to feel like an issue. Some mornings, my shirt feels absolutely in the way, billowing out, folding in and rubbing against me, becoming heavy with sweat. I’ve been wearing my rattiest clothes for walking; they aren’t going with me into my future, so they might as well be of use right now. The problem is that some of them are becoming a hinderance. Even the pair of denim shorts I was so excited to be able to wear again after not being able to do so for 15 years have become so big that they just drop off if I stand still for too long. I had been walking in them, but they cannot be trusted. And my waist is in a weird transition period where I still can’t seem to find a decent belt that fits me, but my pants are all starting to require it. I’m close on the fit, mind you, but it’s just not quite there. Of course, I could just go ahead and get my gym clothes now, but I don’t intend to stop losing weight and I don’t want to waste money. I’ll play around with a list on Amazon; just browsing my settle me down a little bit and let me pause and wait for that goal.
I did not take my phone on my walk this morning; I wanted to just enjoy the sounds around me, but the birds weren’t still singing as I walked later than usual and so the sounds of the morning were just the occasional car driving by. It wasn’t the zen experience I would have hoped for, so tomorrow I will take my music!
[Walk #80]
Weight: 269.2 lb/122.11 kg
Exercise: 2.43 mile/3.91 km walk (9:07am–9:57am, ☀️70ºF/21ºC)
Mindfulness: journaling (throughout the day)
Mood: Very Good
Food: 980 calories
A nice man stopped to ask how many miles I walk each morning. I see his truck pass often, but I thought it was nice to have someone stop to say hi. I hope he has a nice day. I thought about telling him how I’d lost so much weight and how my health journey was partly sparked by turning 44 and realizing that Grandpa Fuchs died at 45, and Dad started having heart attacks regularly in his 40s. I don’t know if I will have staved off those things, but it did start to narrow my perspective and remind me that I probably won’t live forever, despite my insistence to do so. So, no, I just chose mild self-deprecation instead, downplaying my 2 miles as trivial before he moved on.
Justin joined me on my walk again this morning, but he only got in one mile. He didn’t sleep again last night, a problem he’s been having. It’s hard to be productive with such a small amount of sleep.
The world is muddy today. I wasn’t entirely sure how much it had rained last night, but more than I anticipated. It made my paths awkward and short, so I had to just do the small bit in front of the house. And really that was fine. It had been a few days since I did that one.
[Walk #79]
Weight: 269.6 lb/122.29 kg
Exercise: 2.07 mile/3.33 km walk (5:46am–6:34am, ☁️68ºF/25.5ºC)
Mood: Very Good
Mindfulness: journaling (throughout the day)
Food: 1940 calories
A storm was passing by to the South as I started on my walk, which made for a dramatic start. Near the end of my walk, there were scissortails flitting about between a group of red cedars and the fence across the street. At one point, a hawk flew overhead with a scissortail chasing after him. They kept popping in and out of view for a few moments, but of course as soon as I’d get my phone out I wouldn’t see them anymore. And they’d show up as soon as I gave up. I assume the hawk was chased off successfully; ahead a bit, the males continued flitting about, trying to catch the eyes of the females.
Today’s walk was good, but I was having a difficult time with the gravel. You would think they had enlarged it overnight; I was slipping on it terribly. I’m looking forward to walking somewhere paved. It’s unfortunate because I love my walks out here for the things I see, but they are quite hard on my feet.
Yesterday I kept having the feeling that I just couldn’t believe the day was still going. I’m usually incapable of processing more than one task in a day. It all feels overwhelming and the days slip by so quickly—a bit of ADHD. It was such a strange feeling and I wonder if it has to do with regular exercise. Look, I know I’m not running marathons each morning. I’m not doing bodybuilding…. I’m just walking, and really at the end of the day 2 miles isn’t even all that much walking. But it’s huge for me. I started walking at the beginning of April. My goal was to walk everyday, to set a reasonable goal that I could achieve, and do as much as I could do before I thought I needed to stop (pain or whatever). During that first week, I was averaging .75 miles per walk. And that was all I could do. That was a huge change from August 2023 when I walked to the end of the house and back and it was wiped out for the rest of the day. Or October 2023, when I was using my exercise bike. I looked at my log and I had one days of 14 minutes and one of 16 minutes, and I remember those being monumentally huge accomplishments. So, my three quarter mile walks in April felt like a pretty big deal. At this point, I’m doing 2 miles each morning. I’m focused more on pace than on increasing that distance, but I’ll also increase the distance soon probably.
What I’m feeling most ready for, rather than upsetting my walking routine, is doing some other types of exercise later in the day. Of course, I have no clue where to start. That is still what the internet is for—until it starts generating nonsensical workout routines for me via AI. But the info in out there. I’m ready to go find it. And I’m ready to fill my days with things to do. If there are really this many hours in a day, I’m both excited about my future and a little disappointed in my past. Such is life.
[Walk #78]
Weight: 271.0 lb/122.92 kg
Exercise: 2.20 mile/3.54 km walk (5:27am–6:21am, ☀️69ºF/20.5ºC)
Mood: Great
Food: 1420 calories
I felt so lazy yesterday, and that feeling sort of spilled out into this morning. I didn’t get started until 6:30am, but that wasn’t because I had slept in. I just sort of didn’t get up, convincing myself that later would be fine too. That may be true, but it’s not the attitude I want to have. I went down to Prairie Rd and back, sort of grumbling about it for the first quarter mile. But I eventually got over it and finished my walk feeling a lot better.
I’m probably doing too much again. I worry about the way I get into projects. I have grown to love the chaotic nature of everything, but it can all feel overwhelming. What I really want is systems in place to make everything I want to do feel easier, even if those systems are creating a façade. They usually are. I have been journaling for my entire life. It is just part of who I am, but I’m often lax about it and I have always wished I kept up with it more consistently. I have spent 2024 setting new goals for myself at the start of each month, and sometimes they stick and sometimes they don’t. For June, I wanted to figure out my journaling systems. I’m 45 years into chaos, so coming up with something now might prove to be a challenge. But of course, I went in so hard that it feels like an unbelievably huge undertaking. I do that. Sometimes I end up conquering the huge task, and sometimes I give up. This one feels particularly important to me, so I want to succeed.
[Walk #77]
Weight: 275.0 lb/124.74 kg
Exercise: 2.69 mile/4.33 km walk (6:33am–7:31am, ☀️67ºF/19.5ºC)
Mood: Good
Mindfulness: journaling, throughout the day
Food: 755 calories
Ominously foggy morning. Just joined me for my morning walk, and it was a nice change to have some company. He of course showed up early because he hadn’t slept yet, so it was still pretty dark and on a morning when it is so foggy, that made it hard to see much of anything until about 5:45am.
My weight is starting to bother me. I was okay with plateaus, but when I look back at 1 May 2024, only a month ago, I was at 280.8 lb/127.37 kg. Today I am at 273.6 lb/124.10 kg. That just is such a tiny change for an entire month. I did manage to get down to 268.8 lb/121.93 kg during May, but I bounced right back up. I’m just not sure what the problem is exactly. Maybe I’m eating too many calories, but it doesn’t seem like it. I keep track and I don’t really go over. I am also moving a lot more. This plateau has been during the time I went from 1 mile daily to 2. I’m exercising more than I had been. I honestly don’t know what is causing me an issue. I think for June I am going to have to strip everything back and rebuild my diet. That will allow me to see where I might be going wrong. It’s getting frustrating because I should still be losing weight. That said, 7 lb in one month is actually very good, so I should be happy with it. It is just such a dramatic drop in progress that I can’t help feeling a little discouraged.
My pace was good today. Averaged 21’28”/mile. Justin is already in better shape than I am, so he tends to walk faster naturally. It was good to have him walking with me because it made me walk faster just to keep up. According to my Fitness app, all of my heart health numbers are improving steadily… slowly, but steadily. The graph shows all of them trending in the right direction starting in April when I started adding a daily walk to my routine. It turns out, exercise might actually work. Who knew?
[Walk #76]
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