in a dip

I made a new category in my blog called “Dips”. The first few ideas I came up with were “Bullshit” and “Whiney Baby Crap”. Obviously, my first few ideas were very negative, and ultimately I did not appreciate how they dismissed a chunk of emotions that are completely valid. I think too often we look down on gloomy feelings with disdain and perpetuate our inner hostility by hating that we feel crappy. It is completely okay to feel emotionally and/or mentally crummy. There are better ways to handle a dip in the roller coaster of life than self-loathing, something I have to remind myself of whenever I’m low.

So, I’m embracing my inimical dark cloud and writing about it. Writing openly and honestly always makes me feel better because it helps put things into perspective.

Yesterday, I was feeling way low all day. I didn’t have a lick of motivation to do anything. I was sitting like a slug at my computer, just clicking through mindless links. I recognized what I was doing and immediately began berating myself inwardly for being a lazy asshole. It’s so strange. I mean, it’s not strange because most people do it, but logically it’s strange. If a friend is in a bad mood, my reaction is to be encouraging, kind, funny—anything to lighten her mood. If I am in a bad mood, I tell myself that I have no reason and it’s stupid for me to feel useless or worthless. Then, get this, I tell myself that I am pathetic for feeling that way.

I know, everyone is their own worst critic. It still doesn’t excuse the behavior. It doesn’t make it better or okay as normal self-treatment. Moving forward, I am going to focus on being more positive within. It feels important. I think I may have read this somewhere, but I feel that if I can treat myself positively from within, I will have more drive and spirit to be more positive without. I want to be like Dee Troit in AZRD: amazingly supportive, outgoing, and always able to make people smile.

But, you know, in my own goofy and slightly awkward way.

struggling

I have just been eating whatever for the most part. I am an emotional eater and I give in to that a lot. I can be stronger, but I am being lazy.

Sometimes, I feel like two completely different people. Person A is strong, brave, funny, smart, confident, generous, infinitely kind, and loves everyone and everything. Person B is a weak, craven, awkward, always-wrong-know-it-all, shy, socially inept miser who finds everyone and everything suspect.

My Person A is always going “WTF?” at my Person B whenever those traits bubble up from wherever the hell they come from. What makes it really strange is that I feel like I was Person A when I was younger, and now only in the past couple years has Person B ever become an issue. I’m pretty sure that this “Person B” is all a manifestation of my nagging self-doubt, and all I need in order to axe the bitch is to realize that I am Person A and always have been and there is no reason I shouldn’t love and respect myself as much as I want to love and respect everyone else.

That was a pretty schizophrenic couple of paragraphs, so I’ll go back to my struggle with my diet and exercise.  I know that in addition to the [usually] three roller derby practices a week—including one which is one hour of off-skates holy-shit-I-might-actually-die that precedes one hour of on-skates holy-shit-I’m-dying—I should be doing some cross training.

Biking—whether it be mountain biking, cycling, or even a spinning class—is a great upper leg workout. I even have a fairly nice mountain bike and a Groupon to take it to Trailhead Bike Cafe down the road to get a tune up. Oh, and I live a half a mile from a trail entrance that goes into the Phoenix Mountains Preserve! I mean, seriously, what the fuck else do I need to get out there?

Running is another great exercise that I have done and have a lot of interest in. Unfortunately, my knee is still bugging me from whatever I did November 1st at Tim’s 60th birthday party. I need to set up an appointment to get a referral for an MRI (among other things). I want to make sure that it’s something I can run on before I fuck it up more and end up not being able to run or skate.

Yoga is something I really need to do. I need to improve my flexibility, not just to perform better, but to reduce the risk of injury. Being more flexible also makes tricks on skates easier, and that’s just cool. Oh, and I guess getting more in touch with my body and shit is good, too.

Right now, we have a gym membership at Life Time Fitness. It’s a great gym! It’s also far away (~25 minutes) and we never go. Totally a waste of a significant amount of money. I’m not sure if I need a gym right now. I’m thinking I could get away with bodyweight exercises, and when I am looking for more, I can either buy some kettlebells/dumbbells/barbell and weights or join a much cheaper gym that’s closer to wherever I’m living. Well, we are probably moving closer to LTF… I am just not sure I can justify the price if I’m not using all of the services I’m paying for (pool, group classes… I think that’s it). I could go to the group yoga classes, and maybe even take advantage of the yoga benefit that comes with the membership, whatever it is. Something about being able to take classes or something at LifePower studios. Eh, we’ll see.

Man, I haven’t skated since Tuesday and I’m really itching to get on my skates. I just bought a set of Atom G-Rods, and Mr. Awesome at DerbySupply.net is hopefully going to further prove his awesomeness (ha, like he isn’t awesome enough already!) through some waxed hockey laces he gave me. As most people have undoubted heard me complain, I regularly have foot cramps/pains/plantar faciitis as well as shin splints. I was able to reduce the pain by stretching my feet, ankles, and calves 3+ times a day for a while. When I got lax, the fiery pain came back. Lame. I told Mr. Awesome that I’ve tried two different insoles and they don’t help, plus the upper part of my skate fits really loose, which hurts things like plow stops, but when I pull the laces tight my arches hurt even worse. So he gave me the waxed hockey laces and told me how to tighten each section, as well as to skip lacing the first holes at the toe.

All of this happened Wednesday afternoon, and I was expecting to be able to try it all out that evening after the league meeting. The league meeting ran too long to skate! I mean, it was all great information and I definitely appreciated being kept up-to-date on how things were going and all of the policy changes and what not. I was just disappointed that there was no time to skate. I thought I might go to the Glendale Great Skate Monday night, but…

I got a flat tire last night! Long story short, Scott was there and it was changed quickly. I’m not going to go anywhere in the R though, not with a spare on there. The Cabriolet also needs new tires, and Scott doesn’t want me to take it too far, just in case. I mean, it’s also a 22-year old car. So I’m limited to about a 5 block radius from the house. Lame! I think we’ll be able to get new tires mounted on the stock rims and then get everything put on the car pretty fast though, provided wherever Scott takes his car has the tires he wants in stock.

Anyway, rambling about minuscule stuff.

TL;DR—

Struggling with emotional eating, emotions, personal personality quirks, appreciating myself, not skating, and a flat tire.

Looking forward to hitting the Renaissance Festival this coming Saturday with my Phoenix family!

it’s harder the second time around

Keto, that is. The first time I tried it, I went for a few months and did pretty great. I didn’t lose a ton of weight, but I was weight training at the same time and gaining a significant amount of muscle, so I’m thinking it was balancing out. I let Thanksgiving put a gigantic dent in my give-a-fuck, and I stumbled along until Christmas, at which point I just gave up altogether. Before Thanksgiving, I weighed around 190 pounds. After the holidays, I was back up to 208 pounds. To be fair, a lot of the initial weight loss comes from depletion of stored glycogen in the muscles (A.K.A. water weight) on a ketogenic diet, so a significant portion of weight gain is regaining that water weight when coming off of keto. I am sure that I gained actual fat pounds though. I ate like eating was going out of style. I fucking love food.

Now, I’m facing the fact that I need to get back on the path towards weight loss, which conveniently also includes a happier digestive system and an increase in overall emotional happiness. I really felt great when I was doing keto. For those who don’t know what keto is, it’s an ultra-low carb diet known more formally as the Standard Ketogenic Diet. Simply put, nutrition macros are split 5% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 65% fat. After calculating my BMR + basic activity expenditures (sedentary), my total calories come out to 1640 (if I don’t do any extra exercise). This comes out to 21g of carbs, 118g of fat, and 123g of protein. I shoot for 30g of fiber a day, which doesn’t count towards the total carbohydrates.

Anyway, once I got past the 2 week haze, I felt more energized. I felt clearer of mind. I felt full all of the time. I felt fucking great. While I’m being honest, I admit that workouts were harder given the lack of glycogen to use as energy. After a while, however, I began to adapt and my endurance during workouts got better.

I’ve done a lot of research, and ultimately the best route definitely seems to cut carbs. What makes low/no carb diets superior for me is the general ease of choosing what to eat. There are the carb cravings to overcome, though the essence of the standard ketogenic diet is quite simple. And there are so many other no/low carb diets… South Beach, Atkins, CKD (Cyclical Ketogenic Diet), TKD (Targeted Ketogenic Diet), et cetera. It really can be as simple or complicated as I want.

Recently I read about LeanGains, but the cycling seems really complicated. I’m sure that after a couple months of doing it it’s like second nature, as with anything. Still, I’m not sure I have the attention span right now for that type of diet. If I did it right, I think I’d get great results fast. I dunno. I have to think about it some more.

Another way of eating that I’ve read about is Paleo (another good resource is Mark’s Daily Apple, under restructuring at the time of this writing), and it really speaks to me with all of the natural shit and what not. I like sweet potatoes. I like fruit. I like the idea of eating fresh things. It seems to be more of a natural approach. Though, let’s be honest, buying fruit that’s been flown in from other countries isn’t exactly natural. Ha.

TL;DR —

That was a lot to write to come to this conclusion: Bread and flour stuff give me the trots and sugar is not worth the trouble. Protein is really important for my body to rebuild muscles when I tear them apart lifting or running or skating. Fat is also very important for proper body function and repair. Cooking food at home is the best. Getting over the idea that the majority of food’s purpose is to comfort me has been my biggest obstacle, however I have made leaps and bounds in the past year.

P.S. Most restaurant sweet potato fries are battered. Lame.

responsibility

I was having a conversation with Scott about responsibility, and I realized that I am pretty passionate about it.

I was thinking, if everyone did what they could in any situation instead of “their fair share,” we’d be in a pretty awesome spot right now. Maybe I am wrong, but I feel like a lot of the time people get frustrated because they think they are doing all of the work, so they end up just doing “their fair share” instead of performing to the best of their abilities and getting done what they can. I am not exempt from this feeling; I can recall clearly feeling this way in some situations, and I am not at all proud of it.

So, moving forward, in an effort to be the change I want to see, I will recognize my personal responsibility and leave judging it against others’ personal responsibility out of the equation. Honestly, who am I to judge anyone else? Who am I to compare myself to someone else, whether it be a positive or negative comparison? To keep it in the realm of responsibility (because comparing and judging really reaches all aspects of life and are generally bad), why would I short-change myself and my own accomplishments because of someone else’s shortcomings or desire not to be active? It’s really limiting, both personally and globally, whether it be at work or as a civilization as a whole.

So I guess I wrote all of that just to repeat what everyone knows: Be true to your own abilities, knowledge, and standards. Don’t limit your accomplishments for any reason. Be responsible for yourself because no one else is. Daggumit, hold yourself accountable! (This is me talking to myself.)

I will be better at catching myself when I try to find something else to blame for my own desire to shirk responsibilities. Everyone gets tired sometimes, but there are better ways to cope. Honesty is always the best policy, especially with oneself.

edit: Oh, and I need to make sure that I am not pulling this number: I did my part! *wash hands* For real! Fuck that shit. I hate that shit, and I don’t hate a lot of things. I have done it, and I am very upset with myself thinking back to those weak moments.

thoughts on weight loss

… but mostly fitness because that’s what’s really important.

I am looking to lose about 60 pounds. It may end up being 40 pounds depending on how much muscle I end up gaining.

I’ll be doing body weight squats, sit ups, and push ups; preferably every day though I will do them every other day if necessary. I will also be hitting the gym at least twice a week with el boobah to try to help be his motivator. Tuesdays is derby boot camp. Wednesdays is practice for an hour, then the folks who have been cleared for contact practice the last hour. Sundays are a full two hours of practice, which is wonderful. At least, it’s wonderful now that I seem to have a grip on my shin splints and plantar faciitis.

I need to work 30-40 minutes in 3x per week to get going with the C25K program. My knee is sore-ish, however I talked to my doctor and she said I could still run as long as it was just sore and not actual pain. I had some x-rays taken of my knee and wrist to make sure there was nothing bad going on (fracture, etc.) and I haven’t heard back, though just based on how much better I’ve felt after doing my stretches and foam rolling, I’m not thinking I have done anything serious. I think my wrist was hurt, but has been healing and I’ve been babying it too much so I’ve lost a great deal of flexibility.

I’m forgoing the Vibrams until I have lost some weight and strengthened my muscles as well as gotten into a good recovery routine. My tight calves were the catalyst for all of my other injuries, and I am working on getting them loosened up. I should have an appointment Wednesday for a deep tissue massage for my legs. Really looking forward to that. My plan is to get one every two weeks or so.

In spite of deciding to not go with the Vibrams (zero-drop) I have purchased a pair of New Balance WT20s (4mm drop). I’d like a shoe that I can use for everything from running to calisthenics to weight lifting, and these have great reviews. I’m just hoping that the reviews stating that they run about a half a size too small are true and ordering a size 11 wasn’t a mistake. I ordered them from Zappos, and apparently they have a great policy on exchanges, so hopefully it won’t be too much of a hassle if I do end up having to go smaller.

my new blog

Finally getting something rolling again. I’ll update this post with something more substantial once I get the backend of things all situated.

Backend = situated enough.

Right now I have no specific direction for this blog. It’s just a personal account of whatever I feel like writing about. Right now, it’s weight loss and roller derby. I have some thoughts about my career, too, so there will probably be a smattering of that as well.

I’ve had several blogs in the past; the longest running was on LiveJournal. I’m wondering if I was happier to be me back then, and if regularly writing in a blog helped with that.

We’ll see.