Tag: health

New Flower Alert!

I’ve been checking the Japanese Peace Lilly in the bedroom every day, searching for signs of new flowers. Today that search paid off!

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WOOHOO!

I had the little point and shoot in the room so I used it for that picture (with the flash). After two posts last night, can you guess what’s coming? Oh yeah, DSLR (no flash) Vivid vs Monochrome comparisons! WOOHOO!

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I then got carried away and took a couple more…

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What’s up, autofocus? I must have moved.
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I didn’t edit these in Apple Photos at all. I usually just use the auto setting as a tiny little tweak, but I left these alone.

One final pre-work-morning note. Two days ago I ran for a minute at the end of my 30 minute walkies. Yesterday I ran for two minutes. You might expect that I ran for three minutes today but no… I ran for five.

Who am I?

Bad Stomach Night

Well, that just sucked.

I don’t know what happened exactly, but I must have been a little too cocky with my dinner tonight and I got bitch slapped with the worst case of post-gastric-bypass nausea yet. It hit me almost two hours ago and I am still not feeling 100% again. I didn’t throw up, but I was close. It was a pretty awful experience all around.

I only ate a small amount of dinner, but I am done for the night. I will have some protein shake to top myself off once things have finished settling down, but consider me on a liquid diet again for the next 12 hours or so.

The worst part about tonight’s ordeal? I am actually feeling hungry right now. Nope, no way. Time to play it super safe until all is well again.

Yikes!

Positive Progress

Happy Weigh In Wednesday, boys and girls! I woke up, earned myself a stand hour on the activity app, and stepped on the scale. I lost 5.2 pounds in the last week. Excellent. As my meals have been getting steadily bigger I have been expecting a big drop off in the weight loss pace, but nope. Five pounds is awesome.

There aren’t any milestones this week. Usually there’s at least one area where the 10’s column changes, but not this time. The 10’s column in my weight, my weight lost since the surgery, my weight lost since the first appointment, and my BMI are all the same as last week. If this coming week is good they might all change at next Wednesday’s weigh in. That would be pretty epic.

There is actually one thing to note this week. There are two weigh ins from the long distant past that have been sort of sticking in my head. First, my weight on my wedding day in 2009. Second, my weight at the physical I had in order to go back to UMass Lowell in 2000. I can’t remember the wedding weight. It was either X, or X-25. I’m pretty sure it was X-25, but I am positive that the weight at that physical was X-25 so maybe I am just getting confused.

Here’s the thing, my current weight is X-27. That means all speculation can now end. I am without question at a lower weight than I was at our wedding. That is amazing. I am also at a lower weight than when I started back at UMass Lowell. That is unbelievable. I never thought I’d get to this point again. That physical happened in August of 2000. Almost exactly 22 years ago. How is that even possible? I am lighter today than I was 22 years ago today. It also means that I don’t have any past weigh in sign posts left. The wedding and UMass were the only things that had lodged themselves in my tiny little brain. Now it’s all new-ish territory. That’s crazy.

On a slightly related topic, after I weighed in I did my morning walkies. I mentioned yesterday that for the 30th minute I ran in place instead of walking in place. This morning I stretched that one minute to two minutes. I am wondering… should I just do a separate workout where I just run for five minutes and see how that goes? Walk for 30, run for five. Maybe. I am also doing a little bit of weight lifting and stretching every day. I wonder… am I going to turn into a gym rat lunk? I kinda hope not, but at the same time the idea of actually feeling almost healthy is sort of appealing. I mean, I wouldn’t have done the surgery otherwise, right?

Happy weigh in day. Until next week…

Am I Ready for a Concert?

Covid-19… our house might be the most locked down house in America at this point, even though we’re not really that locked down anymore. We’re still trying to do the right thing.

I just found out that Jeff Beck is playing in Boston in October. Tickets aren’t on sale yet, and they are probably too expensive for me with two kids in college, but… oh boy. He’s 78 years old and he’s the only person left on my “you need to see him before he/you die(s)” list.

When I first made that list, probably back in 1988 or so, I had already seen Rush so they weren’t included. The list was Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Steve Howe, and Steve Hackett. I saw Clapton in 1990 and again in 2004. I saw Page in 1988. I saw Howe in 1989 and again in 1991. I saw Hackett in 2019. Jeff Beck is the only one left.

The clock is ticking. There won’t be many more opportunities. Like I said, the guy is 78. I would really like to go, but even if I did have money to burn I don’t know if I would. I don’t know if I am ready to go to a concert, or an indoor sporting event, or anything like that yet. We’re going to Disney World in January, but that feels like a long way off. It feels like a full universe away. A concert in a 1500-2000 seat venue? Less than two months from now? I don’t know if I can wrap my tiny brain around that. I want to, but… friggin’ pandemic.

Another Milestone

I am hitting a weight loss milestone as we speak.

I am wearing a t-shirt that I bought at a Rush concert in 2004. It is one size smaller than all of the t-shirts I’ve been wearing for years.

It fits.

It fits well. Not perfectly (it feels a little short), but it fits well.

I think I can officially wear smaller shirts now.

Tick off that box, kids.

Also, it’s a Rush R30 shirt. How awesome is that? I had an R40 shirt but I put it through the dryer by accident and it shrunk. Now it’s Jen’s R40 shirt. After I lose a little more I might go to the official Rush merch store and look for another R40 shirt. Or a Hold Your Fire shirt, because that was the first tour I saw.

I miss Rush.

200%

While I was waiting for people to show up at my parents house in Tewksbury this morning, after taking all the pictures, I had nothing to do so I started doing my morning walkies. I had two minutes left to go in the 30 minute walk when the first person arrived. That put me in a bit of a pickle. My exercise ring was closed (I had a couple of minutes logged from walking up and down stairs) but I did not make the full 30 minutes. I’ve mentioned before that I have a bit of a streak of 30 minute workouts going.

Would today be the day that I break the streak?

Nope.

I started another 30 minutes in the 34 minutes before the start of my work shift. It wasn’t even 9:00am yet and my exercise ring was already over 200%. Now that is dedication for you. It’s also stupidity because now my legs feel like dead weight. Oh good!

Happy Friday, everyone!

Tired

I am in the habit of going to sleep later and later and then waking up later and later. That habit needs to end right now. Right this minute. I was doing so good. I was going to sleep around 11:00pm and waking up at 6:00am. Four of the last five days have seen me push those times up an hour at least. I need to get up early enough to get my morning walkies in and still have time for breakfast. I don’t like eating breakfast while I work. This needs to change.

Also, I am tired and I don’t want to be. The tiniest change to my sleep schedule messes me up for days. Days, I tells ya.

Okay, I have to go make my breakfast and then go back to work. Ugh.

Fun With Weigh Ins

Today is Wednesday and I have stepped on the scale… even though the last two weeks have made today’s number kinda irrelevant.

I am down 1.4 pounds since the last weigh in, which was four days ago. It looks like a crappy number, but when you add in the previous weigh in, which was six days ago, it comes to 4.2 pounds which is pretty good and it is still missing a day. Even though 1.4 looks like a super small number compared to all of the other check in numbers on my spreadsheet, I am still very pleased.

Progress is progress and if I hadn’t fudged up my weigh in schedule it would look like a really good week’s results. So there you have it.

The total amount since the surgery is now 103.2 and the total since the first appointment is 123.8. I am also 28.2 pounds (approximately) away from the sleep apnea experiment I mentioned last night. Suddenly I am really excited about the idea of not having an alien face hugger stuck to me head every night. Finally, it’s a big moment from the BMI perspective. The value is only down 0.2 but the digit in the 10’s column changed. That’s worthy of celebration, right?

One of the reasons I am happy with today’s results is I have been eating more at each meal. Instead of capping myself at about five ounces of food I am letting it creep up to six or seven or, like two nights ago, eight ounces. I’ve been trying to not be afraid of between meal snacks as well. Mostly I want snacks to be fruit, but sometimes sugar free pudding is hard to ignore. That was the case last night. If I had avoided that 3.5 ounce cup of pudding at 8:50pm last night I might have been down 10 pounds today. Who knows. I am not worrying about it though. I am happy with how things are going. Very happy.

So now I am going to stay on schedule and not even think about the scale (yeah, right) until next week. Wednesday August 17, 2022: The next weigh in day.

Until then, my readers and only friends.

Sleep Apnea Thoughts

I was tested for Sleep Apnea because I couldn’t get a good nights sleep to save my life and I was snoring so loud that I couldn’t stay in the room with Jen anymore.

When I started looking into Gastric Bypass I was told that the surgery would result in enough weight loss to cure my apnea. That sounded good to me.

101 pounds later I’m trying to decide how I’ll know when my apnea is cured if I never stop using the CPAP machine. It seems the only course of action is to just stop using it and see what happens.

But when? I asked Jen what she thought, given that my snoring keeps her awake even more than it keeps me awake. We were both on the same page. If I lose 30 more pounds I’ll do an experiment where I don’t use the machine for a night and see what happens. I’ll be curious how it affects Jen’s sleep, and what the sleep numbers my AppleWatch records look like.

At this rate that will be 4-5 weeks from now. Until then I’ll keep sticking that mask over my face.