Moving on

Hi, old blog! I bet you thought I forgot all about you. I didn’t, I just started a new blog and completely forgot to come back here and link to it.

So here it is, my new blog: An apple-cheeked life. It’s about preparing for motherhood (right now, anyway), setting up house, cooking, crafting, thrifting, and other fun stuff. If you’d like to visit me there, please do!

Thinking about upcoming changes

(Sheepishly stepping into view.)

(Ahem.) Hi, there.

I know, it’s been a while. Last time I wrote here, I convincingly blogged myself into a corner decision about buying a bicycle trainer in order to get more exercise while I’m pregnant, and guess what? I conveniently side-stepped that decision entirely. Basically, more symptoms came along and I’ve been pretty miserable, to the point where eating good food is more a priority than getting exercise. I’m sure you might be thinking I’m nauseous (which I am) and experiencing morning sickness, but actually I’m having problems with the opposite end of my anatomy. Yeah, that’s right, I’m having ass problems, and they suck pretty bad right now. It was bad enough a couple weeks ago that it was too painful to sit on the couch, and there was no way you would get me anywhere near a bicycle seat.

Now that I’m slowly conquering (though never entirely, thanks hormones!) my ass problems, I’m still living in la la land, pretending exercise doesn’t exist. And hey, I’ve lost a total of five pounds since getting pregnant, so hooray for that! I know I need to exercise some, and I’m really hoping that when my second trimester rolls around (in about 2-3 weeks) I will actually have some energy, along with the weather getting better in Spring, so that I can go for walks that don’t involve moaning, hiding from the bitter cold, clutching embarrassing parts of my anatomy, and/or grumpily demanding old person stuff like laxatives and foam donuts.

Meanwhile, I’m a little confused about what will become of this blog. This is supposed to be my health and nutrition and self-esteem blog, but suddenly it’s turned into my pregnancy blog. I’m trying to figure out what is the best way to deal with this. Should I rebrand this blog as a family/crafting/nutrition blog? ‘Cause I could also geek out on all the natural childbirth stuff I’ve been reading up on. Or should I abandon this blog entirely? Has it served its purpose? I don’t know. Maybe I really just need a blog for other stuff. I definitely notice I’m more drawn to the crafting/family blogs lately, which surely is a sign. I have a personal online diary that is mostly protected and private, but it’s more of a diary, and I can’t put all my content there. I have the feeling once the baby comes, my life will change so dramatically that writing about health and self-esteem are going to be in such a different context, I won’t want a weight loss blog so much as I’ll want a mommy blog.

Anyway, stay tuned for some kind of decision. I’d like to work this out pretty soon so I can write about what’s really on my mind (natural childbirth!) instead of feeling guilty for not writing about exercise.

Champion napper and award-winning sloth, at your service

This past week I’ve had some setbacks, and since I haven’t blogged yet this week, that must mean it’s time to write down my setbacks and try to think my way through them…

Remember how I was so chipper in recent posts? Well, pregnancy fatigue has hit me like a brick wall, and I am struggling to stay awake until 9pm most nights. I don’t mind going to sleep early (bring it on!), but it means my after-work workout mojo is M.I.A. Plus, in a blow to convenience and my serious tv addiction, the awesome bicycle trainer I borrowed to help me exercise indoors has been recalled to its original owner. I had one good week where I did 20 minutes every night after work, watching tv shows as I pedaled, with the wireless headphones on so I could hear those American Idol auditions over the bike’s noise, really enjoying myself. Sure, it made our small living room even more crowded, and the vibrations were such that I would get uncomfortably numb in, ahem, certain delicate areas, but it was exercise! With! Television! Fare thee well, idyll!

Even the mild Pacific Northwest climate is conspiring against me, with many mornings of freezing fog and freezing temperatures. I thought with a mild winter we’d be mostly into Spring weather by now. Apparently that was a little too optimistic. With the cold as hell mornings and my recent sleep addiction, it just doesn’t seem feasible to get up before work to walk as I was doing in the fall. That will have to wait until Spring, um, springs.

One option is to invest in my own bicycle trainer, but with even the cheap ones going for $80 on Amazon (and not much cheaper on eBay) they are just expensive enough to make me pause. Is that money better spent on credit card bills? Should I get over my cheap instincts and just make the investment? Ignore the vibrations (or is it the bicycle seat?) that limited me to 20 minutes and count some exercise as better than none?

The problem is that I know the correct answer to these questions, and I’m grumpy because it doesn’t really accommodate my rigorous schedule of couch lounging.

But hey, if I’m unhappy with making the right decision, I’m pretty sure my doctor will have some real tough love for me at my first prenatal appointment. Can you picture her reply when I report that rather than take prevantative steps (literally! ha ha) against gestational diabetes and high blood pressure, I’ve chosen to indulge my need to watch culturally engaging entertainment like Daddy’s Girls and Jon & Kate Plus Eight from the vibration-free sanctuary of my couch.  And that it’s easier to imagine making an extra credit card payment (which, let’s face it, probably wouldn’t happen) rather than spend it on a device that can reduce my risk for scary complications.

Okay, I think this blog post has done its duty. I now feel pretty guilty (but mostly silly) for avoiding an $80 solution to a lifelong problem. A bicycle trainer won’t bring about world peace, but it will make me a fitter, happier, healthier mama, that’s for sure.

I like when I can turn around decisions from being about shame (stop impersonating a human sloth!) to being about practicality and self-care. Now I just have to follow through on this one: I will check in on how it goes.

Goodbye, temptation! (Version 6,754)

Do you have one of those terrible tempting bowls of candy at work? Or in your house somewhere? There is one right outside my office that is lovingly refilled by a certain department almost daily, and I must pass it eight thousand times each day on one of my many, many pee breaks. (Speaking of, do you know why pregnant women pee so often? It’s not, as I’d always thought, something that only happens toward the end because there is no room for your bladder. It’s because pregnancy hormones make your kidneys more efficient! Wow.)

Since going off sugar in late December I have been cruising along just fine. I have passed up endless breakroom treats that used to sing their terrible siren song back in my sugar-addicted days (daze?).

Well today I had a bit more of a personal sugar temptation. I met a friend for lunch who I hadn’t seen since Christmas, and she gave me a belated present. It was a lovely, thoughtful card and a holiday tin full of candy. FULL OF CANDY. And some of it was peppermint candy I wasn’t too excited about, there were also two dark chocolate Ghirardelli squares.

But it’s funny. I took one look at it and didn’t really desire any of it. For a moment I felt the old hoarding instinct, that maybe I should keep the Ghirardelli for later, just in case.

But in case what? The stores ran out of chocolate? Hello, fat thinking! Once I realized this was absurd, I marched straight to the hallway candy bowl and emptied out all my candy into it. It’s not mine anymore, it belongs to whoever it is that passes the candy bowl and needs candy. That’s just not me anymore.

Sometimes I think I sound like a crazy anti-sugar convert. But it’s as if I lived my whole life without knowing I was drugged, and now suddenly I’m alert. It’s a nice, easy bliss born of discipline that seems to require no willpower; it’s the ultimate high.

Big news and big changes

Well, it’s finally happened. I’m pregnant! It’s very exciting even though I’m trying to be only cautiously optimistic. It is still early (week 5 or 6) and who knows what will happen — I’m going to stay cautious until I get into the second trimester. Normally I wouldn’t announce it here, except of course there are some big changes in my life that I want to record.

First, I have started eating according to the pregnancy Daily Dozen recommended in the occasionally annoying and paranoid but super helpful What To Expect When You’re Expecting book. Since I am already overweight, I am ignoring the first of these dozen, which is to eat 300-350 extra calories per day. This simply doesn’t apply as strictly if you’re overweight, and my highest goal is to lose some weight as I progress, as I eat healthier and exercise and my body sheds what it doesn’t need. But don’t worry, I am still eating a lot! And I am eating super healthy foods. And (get this), so far I’m losing weight. Crazy, right? I’m sure it won’t be this easy the whole time, but at least I’m getting a healthy jump on things.

My sister gave me the What To Expect Pregnancy Journal & Organizer to go with my book, and though at first I thought it would be overkill, it’s turning out to be really helpful. There is a food tracker where you tick off which foods you’ve eaten. The Daily Dozen is not necessarily intuitive, as many foods count in multiple categories, so I actually sat down and made myself a little spreadsheet showing all the foods and serving sizes. It’s now on my fridge, for easy reference while I’m cooking or packing lunches, and I keep the journal on the counter so I can tick things off as I go. (I’m happy to send the spreadsheet to anyone if you want it, I just can’t figure out a way to upload it and make it legible.) The categories I’m supposed to eat daily are: protein (3), calcium foods (4), vitamin C foods (3), green leafy/yellows (3-4), other fruits & veggies (1-2), whole grains & legumes (6+), iron rich foods (some daily), fat (4), salt, fluids (8+), and of course the prenatal vitamin.

Since I’m still not eating sugar (and not missing it, dudes!), this is what a typical day’s food looks like for me:

Breakfast:

2-3 eggbeaters in an omelette with spinach, tomatoes and cheese, with one piece of rye toast with margarine. Some apple left over from making my lunch, and a mug of milk.

Lunch:

This is my wonderful Laptop Lunchbox filled with quinoa, carrots, yogurt dip, tomatoes, almonds and some cheese.

Snacks: Typically some fruit, lately clementines or apples, or a cheese stick.

Dinner: Some kind of light protein with whole grains and green leafy vegetables. As I recently announced to my husband, “We’re going to need to get used to have Kale and Spinach in the house at all times.”

*

The journal is also configured to track exercise, but it’s in a separate section from the food, which I find counterintuitive. The exercise section does have a nice table so you can say what you did and how you felt afterward, but I don’t think I’m interested in that. So I’ve been penciling in an Exercise line beneath each week’s tracking table so I can write in the minutes. It works for me! But tracking exercise is only fun because I have finally solved my hate-to-go-out-in-the-cold exercise aversion! My wonderful brother has loaned me this contraption that turns my bike into a stationary bicycle! This thing is pretty cool. It pushes resistance on the back wheel to give you something to push against, and it’s a compact enough set-up that we are leaving it in the living room. Yesterday I hopped on for the first time and biked for 20 minutes. I forgot that it takes me a while to get used to how the bicycle seat feels, so I’ll have to build stamina for longer workouts. My goal is to get 30 minutes each day, and as it gets warmer outside this spring I can also take walks in the evenings.

So that’s where I’m at. Oh! One more picture for you. I recently checked out my Physics Diet stats to get a historical feel for where I am as I start pregnancy, and here it is:

Weight since May 2008

While I’m not at a historic low, I sure am close! I took a long hiatus from tracking on PhysicsDiet, but I’m committed to checking in about once a week to keep track of how my pregnancy progresses. Mostly I’m just happy to see here that in less than a year I’ve managed to lose around 10 pounds, even if many of them have been gained-then-lost-again along the way.

Warm water, ew? Or warm water, wow?

I was intrigued by a report I heard recently on NPR about overeating, because after a fairly interesting story on nerve pathways that signal fullness, there was a toss-off remark at the very end about cold liquids that stopped me in my tracks:

If you consistently overeat, you’ll trigger changes in your stomach, the doctor says. The neurological tissue at the top of the stomach, which signals the brain that the stomach is full, starts to malfunction.

“When you overeat time and time again, this electrical conduit pathway gets tired and it doesn’t tell your brain that you’re full anymore,” says Stiles. “It may send abnormal signals and you may not even realize you’re full.”

If you drink lots of icy beverages with your food, the mixed messages to your body only worsen, she says. “When you drink cold liquids, your stomach will start contracting and it will massage the food that will again quickly leave [the] stomach to the rest of the gastrointestinal track.”

This means your stomach will be empty sooner than normal, and you will be hungrier sooner.

Wow, really? That’s crazy, it can’t be true. Also, isn’t warm water kind of gross? But then I was reminded of this during the week when I drank a cold bottle of water and realized I was hungry, though I had just eaten a great lunch. What was going on there? Either it’s the placebo effect, or it’s true. Ever since then I have stopped using the cooler water at work and used lukewarm or room temperature water from the tap, and I don’t get that weird cold-stomach feeling anymore. It may seem totally counterintuitive and weird, but it worked. I’m going to stop going for supercold water from now on, unless I am actually trying to cool down. Has anyone else tried this?

Happy 2009!

I took an unexpected vacation from this blog for most of December — isn’t that always the way? I visualized December as one long, beautiful, uninterrupted block of time, like any other month except with more parties, but in fact it was first stalled by more back pain and then by a massive snow storm that paralyzed the city and kept me from work for one week (adding to my already two-week long holiday break). Let’s not forget those parties, special dinners, secret shopping expeditions, etcetera. So — quel suprise! — instead of being a peaceful goals-directed mindful thinking month, it was a zany madcap snowblitz punctuated with long manic afternoons of cabin fever, brief periods of lying on my back with heating pads and ice packs, and the occasional interlude of gratitude for simple blessings, like power and water and stable jobs and family. Merry Christmas!

Without being able to shop for untold pounds of butter and sugar during Snowpocalypse 2008, I certainly ate fewer holiday cookies, and with the three parties canceled due to impassable roads, I also ate fewer calories in general. But between the chocolates in my stocking and the one batch of cookies I did manage to make with what I could find in the cupboards (Warning! Tasty! Not Healthy Whatsoever!), I still gained some weight, if my pants are any judge. (I haven’t braved the scale yet.)

Meanwhile, I am continuing to cling to the idea that my planned-for pregnancy (which is going to be real any day now!) will magically spur me to action, turning me into a meditating, walking, vegetable-seeking peacepod. I can’t help but feel my life is on hold, though it helps that walking outside (my chosen exercise) was obviated for two weeks by some gnarly piles of snow and ice. But there sure were some non-frigid days at home when I could have chosen to put on my sneakers and take a walk, and instead I curled up with the real estate listings (another recent obsession), my cat, and a good book.

But! I am not here to report only about sloth! I’m also here with some breaking news in Jesseland, which is that hey, I think sugar is bad for me. This might fall in the category of Painfully Obvious (I like ice cream and chocolate!) except I actually did a little scientific experiment on myself to test whether my food cravings are driven by sugar or not. Here’s a little story about my experiment:

Last week I got one of those messages from the universe. No, not those daily inspiration emails (though I get those, too), I mean a real message, the kind of idea that percolates up for no good reason until it kicks you in the butt. The message went like this: SUGAR ADDICTION: Do you have it? I thought about my (non-menstrual) cycles of craving lots of sweets, and wondered if it was all connected to the consumption of sugar. What would happen if I avoided it for a few days? I told my husband not to bring back any surprises from the grocery store, and I was careful to avoid things like sugary peanut butter or strawberry jam. I kind of forgot about it. On New Year’s Eve, when I accidentally drank some Martinelli’s, I was truly shocked when I finished my dinner and suddenly craved chocolate, like a drug. Ah ha! Back at work this week, I was tested again when a giant basket of treats was in the kitchenette — I went over seeking cheese and crackers but I was not once tempted by the pile of Ghirardelli chocolate squares, or the lemon tea cookies. This is very weird behavior for me — not that fatty cheese and empty carbs are some kind of healthy grail, but still, no desire for chocolate? This was confirmation of my experiment: when I avoid sugar, I stop seeking it. Those Ghirardelli chocolates were just another slab of food, no more or less enticing than any other, and I was able to choose something else just because I wanted to. Whoa.

So as revelations go, nothing profound here, just another thing I’m learning about myself. Addiction makes it really really hard to ignore a short-term reward (that chocolate is staring me in the face!) in favor of a long-term goal (health, sanity, nicer pants). By turning off my brain’s default sugar-seeking mode, it is so much easier to make healthy choices, and plan and eat healthy meals. It’s a freeing feeling, even if I know it’s not the solution to everything.

I’m still going to try to write here weekly. I really want to start walking in the mornings again (if my back pain stays dormant), and I want to eat more vegetables, and shop smartly, and stretch my muscles and try Buddhist meditation and whole lot of other stuff. It’s encouraging to start the new year, if not with a host of resolutions, at least a lot of things I’m excited about. Happy new year, friends.

Victories in Mindfulness!

• Yesterday, after resting my back for nearly two weeks, I woke up early to go for a walk and yet my back still felt too cranky. Instead of whining and going back to bed, I popped in a Bollywood bhangra dance DVD and shimmied for 35 minutes.

• Last night, when I felt perfectly justified in ordering pizza delivery, I took a deep breath and made a quinoa, sautéed rainbow chard, and steamed shrimp dinner instead. It was delicious and my stomach was very happy to avoid a fat-and-dairy gutbomb.

• Today, when I had a million deadlines screaming for attention around midday, I made myself go to Yoga class and take some time to be in my physical body and relax. For at least an hour, I let go of work and just concentrated on the breath, my body, and the calm dim room.

I’m feeling good about days like this, even it takes a judicious amount of soothing my cranky inner child in order to get through the day. Thich Naht Hanh, a Buddhist and Nobel peace prize winning author I’ve been reading lately, advocates soothing yourself like a crying infant when anger or frustration pops up. Instead of simply calming myself down, I try to extend love and caring thoughts toward the part of me that is feeling bad. It works better than simply trying to smooth over the difficult emotion! At least it does for me.

In this episode of the Body Tinkerer…

207.4lbs

Look at that! I’m nearly down to my lowest weight, last reached about two months ago! I continued taking walks about every other day last week, which feels pretty good. Food choices are also going well.

However, it seems like I can’t shake this lower back pain for the life of me. (And believe me, I’ve tried to literally shake and shimmy and twist it away, and that just seems to make it worse.) It sidelined me from a walk last week, and again this morning, since it was so bad last night it hurt every time sat down in a chair or tried to get back up again.

Among other remedies, so far I’ve done the following: periodic stretching throughout the day, no more heels, no more period in case that was making it worse, more chiropractic adjustments (my neck sure does feel good now!), taking a week off Yoga, ibuprofen, heat packs, and ice packs. It won’t go away. It sticks around like a bad cold.

I’m beginning to think that I am unconsciously doing some horrible back-throwing-out thing without even knowing it. So I’ve started trying to catch myself in the act of doing bad posture things doing the day and correcting them when I can. Arching my back while I sit typing away at work? I try to hold my stomach muscles tighter to take up the slack. Locking my knees while I stand, hyper-extending my lower back? Keep knees soft and tilt the pelvis ever so slightly forward like a good Yoga student. Lean forward toward the computer screen? Square my shoulders and sit up straight as a church pew. But it’s so hard to keep it all up! I am going nuts with how this back pain is making life difficult.

It really feels like my body is a collection of bad mechanics. I know that weight loss will help a lot with this, because it will simply remove a lot of the strain from various joints and structures. But trying to get there gradually is hard when the squeaky wheel is my lower back, which so happens to also be the universal joint on which almost all body mechanics seem to depend. I don’t know if all my occasional tinkering (stomach in, pelvis tucked, shoulders back!) is working. If only my job could suddenly morph from deskbound writer to bedbound laze-about, I’d be set!

I suppose for now I’m going to keep my head up (stomach in, pelvis tucked, shoulders back!), my choices healthy, and my walks mindful. I’ll be a good little semi-vegetarian aspiring Yogi, with a touch of the reluctant mechanic thrown in for good measure, and hope for the best. I’d love some advice, if anyone has dealt with anything similar!

Waking up early (shhh, secretly I like it!)

Do you ever notice how calming it can be to carry out your plans? Well, calm is how I felt last week (as I wrote) when I first decided to go to bed super early, set the alarm for 5:30am, and then wake up and go for a walk. I’m working on reminding myself about all the good things about taking early morning walks, because I am so apt to get carried away with fussy lazy selfish anxious reasons to skip it. But I did feel calmed last week, like I was soothing my inner fussy self. That was a nice feeling.
But the most important part is that I didn’t let myself get stopped by last Tuesday’s success! I got up and did it again the next day. Two walks in a row, on two ridiculously rainy and dark and miserable mornings, made bright and beautiful because I got to bop along listening to music and start my day refreshed and alive. Very nice.

My walks were interrupted on Thursday and Friday by some pretty awful lower back pain, though. Ouch. One chiropractic adjustment and one rest day later, I got up on a marvelously sunny Saturday morning and went walking again! Bad mood 0, Jesse 2.

It is lovely to be freed from the Magic Sloth Hour (9-10 pm) of lame tv and aimless web surfing. In the pre-dawn hours, the house is quiet and the neighborhood is sleepy, and I get to spend some time with my own thoughts and feelings. What it really feels like is a healthy dose of mindfulness. Mindfulness helps me stop eating when I am full, choose nourishing food over empty food, and feel my emotions instead of lashing out or using a pint of ice cream to “cope.” I like to think that my morning walk can serve as a waking-up meditation, getting to know the day and my mood and my body all at once. Even if I’m listening to melodramatic dancey Bollywood music (playlist du jour) and squinting at the rain, the physical work is good for my body and my mind, where all I have to focus on is putting one foot in front of the other.

I think I’m slowly coming to a realization about how change works for me. I can get excited about living healthy and make lists of good food, buy accessories and make plans, go to websites and track statistics, weigh every morning and generate a lot of noise about what I’m doing – create a trail of goals, numbers, ideas, and tools. This is great in the short term! I get excited about a shiny new thing, and hopefully, as a byproduct of shiny-newness, I make a few healthy choices along the way. This is great but it doesn’t always help me be more mindful about what I want. If I want change to work once the excitement dies down, I have to be willing to feed the contemplative side of me through mindfulness: not just planning and shopping and cooking the good food but eating it slowly, in a quiet kitchen with someone I love. Maybe this was the missing ingredient for me earlier this year when I started trying to make healthy choices and lose weight. Over the long term, the mindfulness has to be there to steady all the noise and actions that happen on the surface. So mindfulness is what I’m working on this week, though it has to be a mindfulness that connects to physical movement – like Yoga class and morning walks. Maybe I’ll come back next week and write something totally different, but this week my healthy choices are working because they’re connected to mindful acts of self love and self care.

If you’re reading out there, how does mindfulness fit into your life? What helps you to be mindful during the day?