Tag: heart

The Wandering Hermit: Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head

   7 July 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head

While I knew there was a chance of rain today, I didn’t expect it to rain all morning.  It hadn’t quite started when I first woke up at 5am, but I checked the radar and decided to just wait for it to pass.  By 10:30, I realized that wasn’t going to happen so I did some cardio on the front porch.  If it dries later, I’ll try to get in a bit of a walk.  The temperature is so perfect today; it’s a shame to waste it.

I’m apparently doing stationary cardio incorrectly.  I just can’t seem to get my heart rate up as much as walking, even when I feel like what I’m doing is much more difficult.  I have the same issue with aerobic exercises.  They will make me sweat a lot, but they don’t really move my heart rate as much as walking.  It is possible that I need to be slightly more concerned about why walking increases my heart rate so much, but either way I’d like them to be similar.  

The Wandering Hermit: Assessing Myself on a Thursday Morning

   20 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Assessing Myself on a Thursday Morning

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]

The Wandering Hermit: Cardio Thoughts

   17 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Cardio Thoughts

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]