The Wandering Hermit: 2×7 or 5x?—It All Depends

Brian 19 June 2024 Leave a Comment

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]

The Wandering Hermit: Cardio Thoughts

Brian 17 June 2024 Leave a Comment

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]

The Wandering Hermit: Lightning Bugs & Guilt

Brian 16 June 2024 Leave a Comment

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]

Daily Log: 16 June 2024

Brian 16 June 2024 Leave a Comment

Weight: 266.0 lb/120.66 kg

Exercise: 2.44 mile/3.98 km walk (5:06am–5:59am, ☁️72ºF/22ºC)

Mood: Great

Food: 1271 Calories

Italian wedding cake iced coffee
Italian wedding cake oatmeal with blueberries & black grapes
russet potatoes, sweet & spicy baked beans, steamed cauliflower, steamed broccoli, jalapeños, hot sauce, mustard
Happy Belly SF Pink Lemonade

The Wandering Hermit: The House Next Door

Brian 13 June 2024 Leave a Comment

I’m trying to shift my thinking. A few weeks ago I was happy in my ignorance about my future. I’ve been there before; sometimes it’s nice to just know that you’re about to let the wind take you and to not be all that concerned with the outcome. But as soon as I was presented with a plan, I started to settle on it and when it looked like that would no longer be possible, I felt like something had been taken from me, forgetting how recently I had been content to ride the wind. So, let’s reset and regroup. I’m not interested in the kinds of stress I was allowing in. I need to remember myself.

I do not know where I will end up once we sell the house and move on. And at this point, I’m not sure I want to know. This morning I was thinking about how much I’ll miss living out here in some ways. It’s not my dream, and it is very inconvenient to me, but it is nice and peaceful. We are on the corner of Fairgrounds Rd & Burris Rd. The house across Fairgrounds is nostalgic to me. My grandpa used to take us on drives on the gravel roads of Payne County on this side of Stillwater. We might end up driving through Glencoe or Pawnee or Morrison before returning, but that house was one of the landmarks I remember from then; it’s one of the few things that has been the same for all these years. Most of the houses out here are much newer. It was at first a little surreal living across the street from that house. It’s almost like having an old imaginary friend move in down the street. It existed in my mind, but I had no reason to drive out here before my parents moved here, so I didn’t know if my memory was real or if it was all a creation of my mind. It’s not a particularly interesting house. There’s nothing fantastical or noteworthy about it, but for many years it was just a part of those moments spent with Papa, and more recently it’s where the people with the horses that like to escape live. And soon I’ll leave this place and I won’t see it all the time. And I wonder if I’ll still remember it fondly or if it has lost its meaning.

I think walking has been good for me. Sure, it’s been great for my physical health, but I think it has helped me mentally. It is often over-emphasized that walking is good for mental health, but it’s not wrong. It seems to allow my brain to sort things out. I wonder if there is something unique about the action of walking or is it the traversing of a distance. I’m going to be joining a gym soon and doing my walking there much of the time; I wonder if I will see the same benefits in mental health or if I need to be out in the world. I used to do an hour of walking daily at a gym in Anchorage, Alaska. I wasn’t in the same place mentally when I started, so I don’t know that I noticed any shifts. After spending years depressed, anything was going to feel monumental, but the walking has helped quite a bit.

I’m not sure what to do to get started with running, but I am interested if it is possible. I tried it for a minute during my walk, but felt like it was too jarring when I hit the ground. Maybe I’m just not used to it, but it was unpleasant. It felt doable in general otherwise. It didn’t hurt or cause my to not be able to breathe, which had been my primary concern. I’ll look into it. It seems weird that I couldn’t just start running. I feel unequipped. But I also am slightly amazed that I’m even interested in trying it out. I keep saying it, but it is true: I cannot believe that one year ago I could barely walk at all and now I want to walk everywhere.

[Walk #88]

The Wandering Hermit: Boundaries

Brian 11 June 2024 Leave a Comment

mostly personal, not too terribly health focused

I need to learn how to set boundaries and demand that those boundaries are respected. And it isn’t as though I don’t try.

I’ve been staring at the screen waiting for permission to feel the way I feel. I’m not sure why…

I’m frustrated. Yesterday was mentally exhausting, but maybe ultimately revealing. I’m neither the person everyone wants me to be, nor am I interested in becoming that person. Some folks have decided they know how I need to be, how I need to live, how I need to dress, who I need to spend my time with. I am 44 years old. I don’t understand where they found the audacity to act this way towards me. And absolutely every time I express my concerns or try and set some sort of boundary, I’m shut down. My feelings aren’t valid, or what I’ve said is entirely dismissed. It’s so frustrating to feel such a huge lack of respect.

I’m trying to clear out my parents’ house. I spent six months begging for help before I decided that I would need to do most everything myself. But I couldn’t physically. It was part of why I needed to lose weight, and after I started losing I started packing. The house was full, the shed–a 20’x60’ enormous space was completely packed with stuff. And I went through it, and I threw things out for months. I went through every bit of the lives of several people, deciding what was important and what to get rid of. It was an emotionally taxing event, and often genuinely a struggle. In a lot of ways it was the nostalgia that was difficult, but mostly it was the solitary nature of it all. It didn’t feel warm in the way reminiscing should. It felt lonely because I was doing it alone. I’ve been making a lot of decisions alone & neither of my brothers seems like they are interested in really dealing with some of this stuff. One is in a hurry to sell everything and move on, which I understand. We do need to do that. I just think he does that at the expense of both my feelings and at the expense of my ability to keep some of my own things, which he has suggested I just get rid of. And I’m not exactly sure why I should have to. The other hasn’t been ready to deal with much of anything for a while now. He does have some health issues, but he doesn’t really make much of an effort, seemingly waiting for someone to show up and do all of his living for him. He is as dismissive, but also has a sense of entitlement about other people’s time, trying to employ guilt to get everyone to wait on him. Guilt trips are a form of emotional manipulation, and are a sign of disfunction. DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THEM.

I’m sure I will be fine in the end. I’m sure everything will work out. I’m looking forward to some new places to do my daily walks. I’m looking forward to being near enough to a gym that I can go there for some consistency when it’s too hot or too cold outside. I’m looking forward to creating my own life and not being held back by people who never put their own lives on hold for me. I don’t owe them that either, and I really need to stop believing that I do.

[Walk #86]

The Wandering Hermit: Geri & The Economy

Brian 7 June 2024 Leave a Comment

It was an absolutely perfect morning for a nice walk. That said, I did have some trouble getting going. I actually woke up thinking I might just do indoor aerobics today, which would honestly not be a bad idea, but I’m not sure it needs to replace a morning walk, so I told myself as much and decided that if I was going to do aerobics today, I needed to get in one mile as well. That was all just fine until I had walked about half a mile, at which time I was warmed up and decided to get both miles in anyway. And that was a good decision. The temperature was excellent.

Brad texted me last night; Geri, a friend of mine is in the hospital. He says she has pneumonia and a shattered wrist. I’d like more details, but I worry about her; I’ve always worried about her. I worked with her when I was in high school, and we attended the same church congregation. My brother Brad eventually married into a family that she was also married into, so he gets updates on the goings-on as part of updates about his ex-wife’s (and now his children’s) family. I need to go visit.

I’m increasingly eager to get moved, to move on, to find a new place and way of being. This will sound like I’m being down on myself, but I don’t think that’s the case. It’s been so long since I had money that I don’t even understand what to do with it. Whenever I see other people out and about, my first thought tends to hinge on that person’s relative financial security compared to mine. And I think I sometimes get frustrated with people who talk about how bad things are for them and their families, especially when they have a home, they have food, access to clean water, the ability to buy essentials, and usually they have a car and a smartphone and spend a bit of money dining out. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have any of the things they have or not spend money the way they want to spend it. But I do think we have such a comfortable situation that people have started to mistake a reduction in comfort as discomfort. It just isn’t. Not having the excess you once did is probably just fine. I’m also not really saying that I have it bad. I don’t have an income, but I do get a small amount of money through some passive means and even I have a smartphone, a home, food, access to clear water, and the ability to buy the essentials. I just don’t live under the delusion that I am living in poverty.

[Walk #82]

Mindful Musings: Their Ecosystem

While I was doing my meditation, I kept getting the thought in my head: “This is their ecosystem, this is their ecosystem, this is their ecosystem….” On and on and on…. I know it seems a little cliché and silly, but it did come out of my own head. I feel that way a lot living where I do, plopped like a bag of sand in the middle of so many creatures homes; their ancestral lands.

The Wandering Hermit: Rested, Drenched, & Nearly Zen

Brian 5 June 2024 Leave a Comment

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]

The Wandering Hermit: Flitting About In The Trees

Brian 3 June 2024 Leave a Comment

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]

The Wandering Hermit: Pacing Myself

Brian 30 May 2024 Leave a Comment

Well, I learned a couple of things this morning.

I prefer early morning walks. Today’s started at 5:07am, and I enjoyed getting it done and out of the way. It’s a little bit too dark out here that early, but I liked having it done that early.
I can improve my pace, both by trying harder and by walking on pavement. This morning I decided to try walking a little more briskly. While I am not trying to walk fast–my goal has been stamina, not speed–I have been aware that what seems very fast for me is on the bottom of the chart on walking speed. That speaks more to my fitness level when I started than anything else, but I’m eager to change that. Seeing an improvement in my pace will be a clear indication that I have improved my health overall. That’s all I really want at the end of the day.

I need to start using my walking time to think of other things to write about. The problem is that I need to allow my body the time it needs to get into shape and stop putting so much pressure on everything. I’m impatient, I’m eager, I’m ready to weigh a lot less than I do. I’ve lost about 150 lb, and I am happy with that number. I just know how much there is left to go. Without proper distractions, it’s all I can think about. As usual, I need to just remember to take my time. All of this will come in time.

[Walk #74]

Tag: health