Feats IV - taking it easy

So yesterday was a washout, so to speak. And a mess, so to speak. That is the first time in my adult life I've had a 24hr stomach flu, and hopefully the last. My todo list definitely went undone.

My plants are growing! Overnight one sprung. Now if only I could remember which one it was. I'll give the others a little while to see if they also spring, and plant more seeds if they don't. Also I really have to do something about the gerbras and poppies .... soon. Maybe tomorrow.

Today I did stuff like tidy the house, read my email, water my plants, and not eat very much. For some reason, I just don't feel like it today. I gave some thought to cooking the meatloaf I'd planned for yesterday, but with the dearly beloved at some work thing, and not feeling like eating anyhow, I decided to not bother.

I watered my orchid, which involved filling the container it sits in with water, a few drops of orchid fertilizer, letting the orchid sit in it for about 15min, then taking the orchid out and dumping the water. Apparently this is how to water orchids, or so the internet tells me.

I thinned the poppies somewhat - I'll do the rests of it tomorrow, when I have decent light, and possibly also plant them out into my as yet unoccupied pot. Along with some thyme.

What else? I read The Last Continent, and started on Carpe Jugulum. I did a set of pushups, using the kitchen table because I can't do proper ones. I did some stretches to help my spine.

So, things happened. Other things didn't happen. Tomorrow, there may be cooking. And possibly repotting of seedlings.

Time for an early night.

Inversions: Challenge cycle Nov to Dec

New cycle, new challenge points. 4 goals, six weeks, but this time, some inspiration from George Orwell. 

 

 

Six Week Challenge The Fourth: Nov 12th to Dec 

 

Goal 1: WAR IS PEACE: Challenge my war on myself - Find and change one negative thought cycle or behaviour a week

 

I've developed some negative patterns. Not caring for myself, eating things that I know will bite me back, avoiding new experiences, that kind of thing. I don't necessarily expect any changes to stick; but awareness of habitual thoughts and actions is the first step.   

 

Goal 2: IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH: Challenge my ignorance - Complete monitoring every day

 

I've started using Patients Like Me to gather information about what's actually going on inside my head and body. This involves at-least-daily quick updates of overall mood, and recording what each of my major symptoms is doing. I may talk more indepth about this at another time. I will also attempt to keep a daily log of what I do, and publish it here on my blog. I may or may not publish my recorded charts of symptoms at the end of the period.

 

Goal 3: FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Challenge Immobility, Inflexibility, and Atrophy - do my physio exercises daily

 

Well, that one's obvious. Although, if I manage to do other physical things, I get bonus points here.

 

Goal 4: DOUBLETHINK: Challenge my mind - Research and write at least one article on my blog a week about something I've learnt

 

Again, this is pretty obvious. I'm going to say it has to be at least 400 words, although I will allow new recipes, tea reviews, book reviews, introspection, and similar. 

Goals are subject to review and update if I find they are not working, or similar. 

This goalset is somewhat less physical than the previous ones I've set, rather more meta and very introspective. I will still attempt to maintain and increase my physical activity, but my focus is very sharply on what's causing me to not be doing said physical activity.  As always, my greatest enemy is myself.

Back again - monkey wrenches, new goals, and what next.

It's been a long few weeks.  Also, some flowers I saw yesterday.

Going to Kirkland was awesome, and I'm putting together a post with photographs and everything. I have, however, uploaded most of my photographs to the usual place.

Coming back from Kirkland was not so awesome. I couldn't sleep because the plane was doing this weird vibrating thing that felt like being shaken awake every 30 seconds or so. So I kind of started passing out a lot once we came down from cruise and started approaching Heathrow. Oh well, joys of travel.

The three weeks since then have been ... suboptimal. The first week was recovery; I pushed myself really hard mentally and physically when I was in Kirkland, to go places and see things. Whilst I'm glad I did, it wore me out on a lot of levels. I spent the week after we got back mostly asleep, because I was really that tired. And then, because I was silly and didn't book to go see the doctor before we went, I ran out of meds. So the following week was kind of spent trying to work up the energy to go request a prescription, since I couldn't get an appointment sooner than the end of January. To make life more fun, the Wednesday before leaving for Kirkland I had a really bad shoulder spasm. It's just about recovered now - a month later. I also had a bit of a strain in my left ankle, which made travel interesting. Oh, and last week? The dearly beloved brought home a cold. He's been suffering since before last weekend, but I caught it by Friday, and that really put paid to achieving my 6 week fitness goals.

Oh well.

I console myself with the thought that I got very close to most of my goals - and that had I had one fewer monkey wrenches thrown in my works, I probably would have got all of them (except the one that involved doing something every second day).

So, today is the start of a week of rest, before formally restarting for the next 6 week goal period. That said, I've already decided on my goals for 18th June through to 30th July. Here they are with my previous (30th April to 11th June) goals:

Stamina - Running.
I started out with 1.5km in 15min. My goal was 2km in 15min. My most recent run (in mid May) was 1.8km in 15min.  I'll work towards my original goal, with a backup goal of 3km in 20min.

Strength - Pushups.
My previous goal here was to go from 6 really old lady pushups to 12 really old lady pushups. I achieved that, so now I'm going for 12 full extension from knee pushups.

Strength - Lower/mid trapezius development.
I went from 3x10 4kg one arm rows to 4x4 40kg bent over rows. This round, I'm working on doing an incline pull up, I think they're called. Basically, lying on a bench under a bar, and pulling myself up to that bar. The end goal is a full pull up of course, but hey, baby steps. I have no idea what my baseline is in terms of the bodyweight exercise, so I'm going to test myself out as soon as I'm well.

Diet - general clean up.
My specific goal was no more sugar added drinks, and I managed this, with the exception of a coke on a day that I thought I had an appointment (which turned out to be moved) and a couple of cokes when I was in Kirkland. I've also taken up drinking orange juice again, but I'll probably cut down on that over the next few weeks. I'm going to maintain the no sugar drinks, and add in moving towards Paleo. The major part of this will be reducing the grains in my diet, especially gluten. In concrete terms, grains no more than twice in any four days, except when I am travelling and have no choice. This is a major sacrifice, because I love my gnocchi, and my fish fingers, and a bunch of other things. I need new convenience meals. If anyone has ideas for low-effort, fits-elsie-requirements food, please tell me? I'm running out of ideas.

Flexibility.
This one I screwed up. I was going for every second day mobility workouts, for a total of 21. I managed a total of about 11, I think, before I got monkeywrenched. Part of this was hitting ones I couldn't do, and part of it was my shoulder injury. However, I'll keep trying for this one. Flexibility is really important to me, I just need to find ones I can scale to my level, and not injure myself doing.

Life.
My goal here was to make at least one significant blog post a week. On average, I think I exceeded that thoroughly. On specific ... well, the last three weeks weren't so good for that. Still, amongst other things, I did get into the habit of daily achieving things, and acknowledging those things, which was a major mental health improvement. Over the next six weeks, I'm going to aim to keep up my at-least-once-a-week goal, and include on top of that, at least one photography post, one cooking post, and one knitting post (hopefully of a completed project).

Expected Monkey Wrenches.
Trip to Florence - the dearly beloved is speaking at EuroPyCon, and I'm tagging along. I'm not going to the conference, because frankly I haven't recovered enough to get anything out of it - but I am definitely going to see a bunch of things while there. This trip is going to be 30th June to 8th July. I've worked out my daily itinerary, which should limit the impact on my mental energy. I'm investigating some socks to wear with my footshoes, and taking my boots, so my feet don't scream at me so much. I'm also packing sunscreen. I expect recovery to occupy most of the following week, but this time, I'm going to have medication sorted out in advance.
Olympics - We're going to see the Fencing on the 30th of July, YAYAYAYAYAY. But - London's going to be kind of a mess. This may inhibit my ability to get around somewhat.
Social events - there's a few parties and whatnot on that I've been invited to - and those things can take me a while to recover from. Still and all, planning helps, right?
Other - I probably will have an attack of the meh at some point, or at least one injury. I've got appointments before and after my trip lined up with my physio, to make sure I'm in top shape, and I'll also be doing my best to avoid further injuries.

Okay, that's out of the way.

It does occur to me that with these goals, there's an element I'm missing - the put up or shut up and reward bit. Basically, put up or shut up is a meaningful penalty that I forfeit if I don't achieve my goals, and reward is what I get if I do achieve them. This has the meat of a blog post of itself, so I'm going to turn it into a rant and do it later.

In the meantime, I'm going to carry on with my usual Tuesday - putting away groceries, tidying up a bit, and trying not to fall asleep. Oh, yeah, and Diablo 3. I really want to get all my characters to about the same level so I can clean out my stash, it's annoying.

Oh, and charge up my camera battery and stuff because I have a photography trip to Brighton coming up on Saturday, hurrah!

DOMS (not the fun kind)

This was going to be an achievements post, but then I got into rant mode. It happens. Twice in two days, actually. Enjoy.

Woke up tired and sore today. Annoying, but oh well.

I'm researching branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) to help mitigate the delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) I get from working out. For some reason, I have both prolonged and intense DOMS. Most people, as it happens, get this for about 12 to 36 hours post workout, that is, starting 12 hours after a workout and going until 36 hours after the workout. So basically just the next day. For me, it seems I get it for around 12 to 60 hours post workout. This, amongst other things, makes for a really awkward work/rest cycle.

To put it more concretely, say I work out on Monday evening. Normal recovery would then allow me to work out on Wednesday morning. Personally, I'm still sore, and I certainly will still be sore this evening. I'll be okay probably tomorrow morning (Thursday). This leads to a cycle of something like this: Mon (eve), Thurs (morn), Sat (eve), Tues (morn), Thurs (eve), Sun (morn), Tues (eve), Fri (morn), Mon (eve) ...

Frankly, that's not going to work for me. There is the other option, of course, of doing only 2 workouts a week - but with a fixed group session on Friday evenings, that means I get only one chance a week to work on my fitness goals. I mean, exercise is exercise, and that's good, but I have goals.

There have been a few studies done on the effect of BCAAs on DOMS. It seems to be effective in some degree in reducing both the duration and the intensity of DOMS. As I understand it, the BCAAs act to reduce muscle damage during a workout, and also promote muscle repair post workout. It does mean swallowing a bunch of pills before and after, but well, I can deal with that.

Intensity of pain wise, my DOMS is also fairly severe. Usually, DOMS is related to the amount of effort you put in - it's basically caused by muscle damage and repair. Generally, your muscles will inform you during the workout how much damage they're undergoing, and from there it's generally easy to work out how sore you're going to feel afterwards. For some reason, I don't really get those signals. I can do a workout where I go nowhere near my maximum effort, feel nothing but nicely warm and loosened up afterwards, and the next day I'll be stiff and sore. If I actually go all out, the next day I'm lucky to be able to shuffle around, and sitting down and standing up become exercises in pain tolerance. And I'll be like that for the next four days. I wrote about this a while back here.

For mitigating my pain and recovery, the current things I'm doing are protein before and after; electrolyte solution during and after; no caffeine the same day or following day; calcium supplementation after; and low rep sets with heavy weights. Each of these things have helped a bit, dropping caffeine the most.

BCAAs are the only thing that aren't yet part of my regime, so here's hoping they help too.

16, move every zig

Today's been a productive day.

•  Housework! Laundry, dishwasher, a quick tidyup. 

• Wrote a blog post, State Change, about how I've been going the last couple of weeks. I really appreciate the messages of support, empathy and encouragement I've been getting. Thanks guys, you're all incredibly awesome.
• Talked to my mother on Skype for an hour.
• Had some lemons that were getting to their use-by date, so I juiced them and froze the juice for use in home-made electrolyte replacement drinks (so much cheaper and probably better for me than Gatorade). 
• Ordered the groceries for the week.
• Ate in a timely manner before going to the gym. Hopefully this means I won't hurt too much tomorrow. Fried eggs with lean ham and rosti. Mmmmm. Om nom nom. 
• Went to the gym, and worked out. I think I can safely say I've achieved one, possibly both of my 6-week strength goals. For pushups, the goal was 12 minimum extension knee pushups as a single set max. Today, I did 10 full extension knee pushups on my second set. For one-arm rows, the goal was to do a 7x10kg set. Today I did a 4x35kg, on my fourth set, which is nearly double the weight per hand of my goal. My third set, which wasn't quite good form, was 4x40kg. I think I can fairly say that I've probably overachieved. I'm going to do a formal retest on Wednesday to see how my progress is going. And then set some new goals - again for a 6 week period. 
• Had a wonderful hot bath.
• Finished reading "The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson at the end of my bath. Excellent timing, that. And now, to bed!

14, in which I drink too much

On the bright side, social life, right? Also, I'm making these things more high level now that I'm doing more stuff.

• Did much research on camera lenses.
• Had a date with the dearly beloved at Vagabond, and had delicious wine.
• Went out to the wee hours for a hens' night. 
• The following morning, got out of bed and spent the day at Kew Gardens, whereupon I took many, many, many photographs.
• Processed those photographs, including making a shortlist of the ones I liked a lot.
• Started a blog post for all the photographs that were awesome.
• Got about halfway through Brandon Sanderson's "The Way of Kings", book one of the Stormlight Archives.
• Started uploading all the photos. ALLLLLLL the photos.
• Went to bed at a sensible time for a change.

13, with links to many photographs!

So, I've thought maybe I should put a photo with each of these, to make them less boring. Not that they are necessarily boring, but as an exercise in anything other than propping up my self-esteem, they lack interest. To me, anyhow. If you've got a different opinion, feel free to share it :P

Also I want to get back into daily (or semi-daily) photography. Well, at least, more frequent photography. Not sure I want to attempt a 365 project again - it might be more stress than it's worth at the present.

Here's a picture for you, taken on my way to the physio.



So, anyway, on with the things I've managed to do:

• Went to physio, got told I'm inspirational and I'm doing all the right things. Yay!
• Processed and uploaded LOTS AND LOTS OF PHOTOS. Many, even. Some from stargazing near Ballarat, the trip to Edinburgh in December, some trains in Tiaro, some chicken soup, and the alchemy exhibition in the Science Museum. And some flowers.
• Talked to my brother on skype for a couple of hours, which was awesome. 
• Started researching new lenses for my upcoming travel. I am teh confused. Is it possible to replace my 18-50mm and my 55-200mm lenses with a single lens? With image stabilisation? I'd like to do that if possible - that and my nifty fifty and a macro lens would cover everything I currently want, I think. Recommendations for an extremely amateur photographer who photographs flowers, architecture, and art but not people? Canon platform, btw. Actually, I'm going to make a post on this. Stay tuned.
• Researched what I'm doing to do on my Florence trip. Looking at seeing the Uffizi Gallery, Argenti Museum, the Accademia, and a couple of walking tours of various districts. I'm there Sunday through Sunday, first week of July. Oh, and we're coming up through Pisa. :D
• Definitely keeping up the exercise - managed to get 40min walk on Thursday. I think I'm going to go back to High Street Kensington to do a photo shoot of a church there, on a day when it isn't raining quite so much. 

This took ages to publish because I was waiting for my photos to upload. Soooo many photos. I should really keep up with them better - then again, that's exactly what I'm doing! Props to me.

Achievements 12 - catch up

I missed a few days, because I was feeling down. A summary:

• I caught a Red Bus for the first time EVER!
• Got myself some Vibram Fivefingers
• Caught a red bus for the second time
• Blogged about it
• did housework, cleaning, etc. 
• Made chicken soup to a new recipe
• Filled out my food diary consistently
• Figured out how to hit my minimum daily calories instead of going into massive deficits
• Did my mobility workouts
• Did most of my other workouts
• Took photographs
• Published my photographs (some of them, anyhow)
• Went on a geek date with the dearly beloved to the Science Museum
• Went to weekly gym seminar thingo - got weighed in, apparently I've successfully misplaced about a kilo.
• Tried runescape

Rightio, up to present day. Today, I:

• Unstacked/restacked dishwasher
• Tidied the place up - Wednesday is cleaner day. 
• Washed my hair.
• Filled out my food diary, I've been good with this.
• Signed up for spotify, so I have music to listen to while working out.
• Researched adult beginner gymnastics in London. I still need to do a lot of strength and flexibility work before I can actually go ahead with gymnastics-specific skills and training, but knowing where to go when I reach that point is a good thing.
• Did two mobility workouts, on shoulder flexibility. Man, do I have a long way to go. Still, it's a heck of a lot better than about 6 weeks ago, when I couldn't even get my shoulder into a neutral position at all.
• Took advantage of my hair being washed and out to take a couple of photographs.
• Did a quick blog post about said photographs.
• Made lunch. And breakfast.
• Defrosted meat for lunch well before midday (it takes ages to defrost here - 2+ days in the fridge, 5+hrs on the bench).
• Went to the gym and KICKED ASS (will post about that in a bit)
• Made dinner - baked veges with bangers on top! Easy 1 pot meal.

My First Footgloves

My recent enthusiasm for moving my backside and getting fit has resulted in a truth becoming obvious: I need to replace my sneakers. After a few minutes on the treadmill it becomes clear that while they once supported my arches, they no longer do so, and besides, I've worn holes in the heels.

It seems that recently, barefoot or minimalist shoe have become fashionable in certain circles of the fitness world. Experiments on my own have led me to believe that for my particular foot and body geometry it's probably a good idea to at least thoroughly explore this alternative. So, yesterday I hopped on a tube and then a tube and then my first ever London bus and then I walked to buy myself my very first pair of Vibram FiveFingers.

So why exactly have I gone from one extreme to the other? It's pretty obvious that's exactly what's happened. I have gone from sneakers that are rigid, have huge amounts of cushioning, correction, and support - to what are basically, thin gloves with a tough layer.

Let's start with my biggest problem - pronation. My ankles fall in. Both of them. Quite significantly. So that's a major problem my shoes need to correct for.  Here's a picture of my feet side by side (my left foot is on a book to adjust for the difference in height).

Oddly, it seems that in terms of correction ... the fivefingers are better, or at the very least, equivalent. Despite not having anything there to do the correction with. That's a wee bit weird - until you consider the shape of the thing. I have crazy narrow feet. An AA fitting, I've been told. Most women's sports shoes come in a C fitting - even finding ones that are a B fitting is challenging. My old sneakers are about a B fitting, so even though the shoe itself has all this wonderful reinforcement - my ankle has heaps of room to move because the shoe is simply far too wide. On the other hand, the fivefingers are adjustable to even my narrow feet - even people with narrower feet than mine would easily be able to adjust them to fit.

This moves on to arch support. Surely the sneakers come out better? Well, maybe when they were new. Now, because my ankle isn't kept true, over the time I've been using them the arch support in the foot has been stomped sufficiently flat that I can't rely on the shoes to put my weight where it ought to be (on the outside of my foot) and instead it goes straight down the inside unless I'm paying very strict attention.  Again the fivefingers come out well ahead here, because there's nothing to stomp flat. It's already mostly flat. Not only that, my foot's neutral position in the shoe channels my weight to the outer edge of my foot.

My last major problem is impact while running - or any movement, really. Surely the sneakers will come out ahead here. Impact changes depending on which part of the foot strikes the surface first. I experimented with this in my sneakers a bit. It turns out that heel striking jars me all the way up to my jaw. I feel it, and it is uncomfortable to start, rising to painful. Toe striking is much more comfortable. The problem is - to toe strike in my sneakers I have to really think about every single footfall. That's not so much of a problem when I'm walking along at 6kph. When I'm running at 9kph or sprinting at 11kph, on the other hand, it gets significantly more challenging. Doing some tests while trying the fivefingers on, I naturally toe strike at anything much above an amble. I can heel strike if I really want to. I don't want to usually.


Of course, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. The first time I put on a pair of fivefingers, it took me a good half hour to get them on. These are not time friendly to try on (today, it took me a good 30secs - or about the same time as normal shoes and socks).  Finding a stockist who actually has a full range (or close to) so you can find one that actually suits your foot is quite challenging - there seems to be rather larger demand than supply at present. And not every style will suit every foot - I chose Komodo Sports, because of the styles I tried on, they suited my foot best. None of the LS shoes fit correctly - of course, they're made more for people with a high instep and wider foot, so that's not a surprise. I'm not at all happy with the colour, but well, they'll do as a sneaker replacement. Until I get my second pair.

The other downside is that if you're used to your shoes supporting your feet, it'll take you 4-6 weeks to adjust fully to the fivefingers, so their website says. I expect it to take somewhat less time for me, since whilst I haven't been doing much in the way of running barefoot, I have gone for bare or socked feet most of the time the last couple of years. The adjustment is mostly learning to use muscles in your feet that have atrophied. They'll also change the way you stand and walk, which will affect your hips, back and neck - positively in the long term, but as with any such adjustment, it may not be comfortable to begin with.

If your feet are too distorted by wearing years of punishing shoes they also may take a very long time to get used to, since they force the foot into a more natural shape - toes separated, no heel elevation, emphasis on the pad of the foot. They also have a very distinct prejudice against having second and third toes longer than a big toe, although roughly equal length is accommodated.

Lastly, these are not for everyone. It does take a certain level of self confidence to wear them in public - less so now that they are becoming more common, but they are distinctive. Colours are limited - I'd prefer a plain black, personally, but the best I can do with this model (when I find a stockist who has them) is black, grey, and gold. They feel like going barefoot - even I, the intrepid I-don't-care-what-other-people-think-of-my-clothes person, felt somewhat undressed wearing them in public. And I need to find a pair of socks. Knee high ones. Because my ankles and lower legs get cold. Yes, I am a wuss. We all know this.

Personally, I think I'm sold on them.

Achievements 10

Once more into the breech ...

• Caught up on twitter and email around 8am
• Filled in yesterday's food diary. Note to self: eat more. About double.
• Talked to my mum on skype, yay!
• Cleaned up kitchen lots.
• Emptied bins.
• Had breakfast in the AM.
• Tidied the house.
• Ordered some electrolyte powder and protein powder, since things like powerade are expensive, and I need more easy-to-consume protein in my diet.
• Read up on chicken soup recipes. I feel like chicken soup for dinner tomorrow, and we have some chicken-with-bones in that needs using.
• Also read up on savoy cabbage recipes. Seems I can do my usual bacon, onion and garlic trick - that'll go nicely with some rib eye steak and maybe some mashed spud, I reckon.
• Joined up on MyFitnessPal, since MyNetDiary decided to start charging extra for services I'd already paid for. 
• Went to the gym, and did a lot of strength work.
• Had a nomnom awesome meal of rib eye steak, savoy cabbage&leek, mashed spud, and shaved lean ham for dinner, putting me pretty close to my nutrition targets for today.
• Another long, hot bath to offset the strength work and hopefully make me less sore tomorrow.
• MobiltyWOD - forward hip flexor stretch. I modified it, since the example given stretched my quads rather than my hips.

'Night all.

Achievements 8 - Triumph despite adversity

Today I have an interview for a job! eek.

• Read an article about how Women Need Makeup. Did not rant. Much.
• Did my mobilityWOD. One minute at a time. Holding a full squat is hard, yo.
• Used google hangouts (for the first time) to talk to some very dear people on the other side of the world
• Double-checked and finalised tomorrow's grocery deliveries.
• Polished my boots.
• Got to interview on time.
• Instead of wallowing in despair, talked about it to people online and felt better.
• Went to gym seminar despite feeling horribly drained.
• Did a workout. Beat last week's run time. 

I still feel utterly awful. Emotionally, today was a Bad Day. BUT I got everything done I set out to do IN SPITE OF THE SAD so in that sense, today was an EXCELLENT DAY where I WON THE EVERYTHING. 

Achievements 2

• Finally transferred home-made chicken stock from icecube trays to ziplock baggies. 
• Thought about dinner and got meat out of the freezer to defrost. There will be stew. Stew, I say! And maybe dumplings. Not 100% paleo, but well, I do have stuff to use up. And a husband to keep happy. Even if he does make the kicked puppy eyes when I say 'NO TOUCHY' when he tries to lift the lid and check on the dumplings before they're done. Speaking of, I'd better get out more meat and do a bigger batch this time. Last time there were no leftovers and I was all :( because I wanted it for lunch. This time, there will be leftovers! I hope.
• Had peppermint tea of awesome instead of softdrink for non-water drinking stuff.
• Put together my gym bag (gym clothes, deodorant, change of undies and socks, pen, notebook). 
• WENT TO THE GYM. 15min run/walk (1.5km), 3x12 one-arm rows with 4kgs, 3x12 airsquats, 6 knee pushups, 2x30sec planks from knees, a lot of stretching. 
• Asked about the lose and shape up program running at the gym - 12 week course, primary motivation is accountability and in-person support. I'm thinking about it.
• Collected my voicemail for the first time ever in the UK.
• Remembered to buy diced bacon and non-milk on the way home FROM THE GYM. 

Right. Time to make dinner. And have a long, hot bath.

• Made dinner. Beef and ale stew with gluten and diary free dumplings. Was very tasty.

And now, sleepytime.

self.fix()

Well, self.improve() anyway.

I'm fed up with being sick and tired and sorry for myself and weak and unfit and bored and depressed. I feel stale and old and useless, which is a bad way to feel.

So. I'm fixing my diet, going towards a Paleo diet (which is, incidentally, gluten and dairy free by default, hurrah). This means: fewer carbs, more protein, probably a lot of bulk meals stored in the freezer. I've stared this process by changing my weekly shop slightly, and soliciting some recipes that are simple to do in bulk and store well.

I'm fixing my exercise, or rather, initiating some. Tentatively, I'll start with something like this:
- 5min warmup on treadmill
- 10min of intervals on treadmill for distance
- One-arm dumbell rows, 3 sets of 10
- Air squats/travelling lunges
- Plank, hold for max time;
- Bicep curls (for grip strength);
- Tricep dips
- Stretching.
 In about an hour. I'll try and do that once this week, and twice next week, adding weights as I can.

I'm fixing my brain. I'm getting off the ground with my ardvino project from the software side, and listening to a backlog of podcasts. I'm reading books other than my comfortable reads, including nonfiction. This week, "Programming Language Pragmatics" by Michael L Scott. I'm writing blog posts.

I'm fixing my social life. I'm actually going out to my weekly meet (and staying sober), I'm reading my twitter feed, and I've reactivated some old accounts on various forums to try and get some engagement there.

I'd appreciate encouragement and support. I need it, I think.

Working out at full intensity is good for you, my ass.

I did a session with a Personal Trainer on Tuesday. This, while in theory a good idea - get fit, get strong, etc, yay - has turned out to be less than entirely positive. As my workmates can attest, I've since spent most of the subsequent days being unable to walk or function normally due to severe muscle pain. This morning, Saturday, 4 days later, most of the muscle pain is gone, but enough of it has remained to trigger a spasm in my neck and shoulder. I pushed myself during the session, a bit, but I'm pretty sure I could have gone a little harder on certain exercises.

Ow.

I know all the fitness whatevers everywhere say that for maximum benefit, you should train as hard as you possibly can without making yourself ill at the gym. They also say that you should do it about 3 times a week. Those two aims seems to be ... incompatible, at least with respect to my body and its quirks. I think I'd rather take longer, train with less intensity and train more often than put myself out of commission entirely once a week.

Is there anyone out there that can tell me why I have such a protracted recovery time - even when I'm not pushing myself as hard as I can go? Is it just that I'm that numb to my own body's signals during training? Is there something dietary I can do to make myself recover faster? I already eat a lot of protein as part of my daily diet. Is it just that when I push myself, I don't hold anything back, normally? For me, full intensity is just short of injury. Is it something different for other people? Also, what the hell is wrong with me?

I suppose I need to learn restraint. Not one of my stellar qualities in general, really. I tend to go full out at whatever I do.

Status quo

An easy thing to write about is updating where I'm at at present, in various aspects.

I'm studying. That's freaking me out a bit, because I haven't been keeping up with my studies at all, and I have an exam on Tuesday 2nd November. That is stressing me out a lot. I'm going to be spending the next few days buried in wine chemistry, which should do interesting things to my brain.

Speaking of november, that's NaNoWriMo! My plan is to write that long-awaited DnD campaign. I have no idea if there's 50k words in it, but I do know that I can probably get most of the way there, especially as many of my workmates will also be doing NaNo, so I'll have a lot of peer support and encouragement. I'll write more about the project as it evolves.

I'm on the get-healthy-lose-weight-get-fit kick again. I'm cycling to and from work a few times a week (when weather and health permits), using the cycle2city centre as my work terminus. I'm eating a mostly-Paleo diet, with a few slipups. I've started seeing a personal trainer again, and I'm working on my upper body strength mostly, which is currently in an entirely woeful state. I'm hoping to be a fit, strong, healthy size 10 by my 30th birthday in May. Mental health wise, aside from a few incidents here and there, I'm doing well. No major depression, no major anxiety to talk about aside from the occasional spike, and usually for cause. I have my off days, but by and large, I'd say I'm almost normal, for just about the first time in my life. And it's been long enough like this that it feels normal, which is wonderful.

I'm working fulltime, as a Content Author at RedHat. I'm enjoying the work and not finding it overly challenging at present. It's nice not to be stressed out of my mind while working for a change.

I'm still a committee member for Linux Australia. We're working on some pretty useful, although possibly not exciting things that should be good for the org in the long term. I'm enjoying it quite a lot, especially the bit where I get to work with awesome people. I'm looking forward to LCA, where I will not be volunteering (I hope) and actually get to enjoy the conference. I probably won't be speaking; I can't think of anything to actually speak about that either hasn't been done to death, or might possibly be relevant. Seriously, most of my tech stuff these days has to do with wine production, and whilst that's very interesting, I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a place at an IT conference.

I've also been doing a fair amount of volunteering and participation in various wine events. I stewarded at the Royal Queensland Wine Show at the RNA and the Courier Mail-Mecure Queensland Wine Show recently. I'm heading down to a Purple Palate event, Juicy Fruits, next week on Thursday evening, and really looking forward to it.

In my clearly obviously copious spare time, I'm playing World of Warcraft, Fallout: New Vegas, going to lots of #btub events, and painting my nails interesting colours.

So. That's me at the moment.