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Category: Announcements
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Apr
11
Ever since Teresa brought her blogs together – including her health journey blog – into one blog – Mom Grooves – I have been thinking about doing the same.
When I first started writing online, I couldn’t get enough blogs. Granted, most of them were paying jobs, but there were still plenty of them. One per subject, and you never blended them. At one point I think I had nearly a dozen blogs, both personal and professional.
But as the years have gone on, the jobs have been cut and I’ve moved on to different projects. I’ve cut down a lot on blogging, but I still had that mentality of one blog per subject.
While I’d still like to keep my fiction writing blog separate, I am thinking of putting all of my content from here onto my ‘life and stuff’ blog Down Under Views. What Teresa said about making her health journey a part of the rest of her life makes a lot of sense to me.
Plus I think it would be great to have one blog with somewhat regular posting rather than two with barely regular posting. Haha.
I know switching URLs can be a death stamp for some blogs because readers don’t follow, but I am hoping people would be willing to make the jump with me.
I’m not doing this right now because I want to have the time available to fix issues that might come up. I will let you know when it’s happening, though.
So that’s what I’m thinking. I’m hoping the people here don’t mind posts on crafty stuff and daily life stuff, and I’m hoping people over there don’t mind health stuff. Either way, I think it could make a better blog overall.
Category: Announcements
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Apr
03
How many times have I meant to post here but not gotten to it…? Way too many, it would seem, if I haven’t posted for so long! Haha.
I have missed it here, but I have still been quite busy. Stress management and pain management classes have ended and I am going slow and steady at the gym. After Easter, a lifestyle class (a bit of group therapy, doctor and dietician) will be starting.
Job help is progressing, too, and I’ll be taking my first class since 2006 in May. Woohoo!
But here we come to the grit of it.
I have always been about standing up and dusting yourself off when you fall off the horse. I’ve said that, if nothing else, at least I am a person who keeps on trying. But the trucking has been very difficult lately.
I’ve started a food diary, cut calories, become more calorie-aware, have been going to the gym, cut out almost all alcohol… and things have gotten progressively worse. The tiredness that has plagued me off and on for years has been happening a lot since I had the flu last year and came to a major peak in the past fortnight.
I’ve been so exhausted that putting on my clothes in the morning is a major effort – and that’s after a full night of sleep. You can imagine how going to the gym has been going. That along with a bunch of other niggles that are happening more frequently finally got me to go to the doctor to address the problems.
So today I started on the road to getting the mystery sorted out. Tomorrow I get some blood tests. After Easter, I will get the results and go from there.
I’m hoping it’ll be a short road to answers, but it may be a long one. For those still reading, thanks for bearing with me while I try to get my energy levels back up.
Category: Checking In
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Mar
19
Say hello to my little charms.
Almost since I started out getting healthier, I have struggled with the whole rewards thing. I’ve gone from saying that I don’t need rewards whatsoever, to giving them a go, to tyring to figure out what would work for me anyway.
For a long time, I have worked without them. Frankly, I was too busy trying to figure out a multitude of other things to sit down and figure out how to reward myself. But after a talk with my psych about rewards and how they really can be beneficial to helping one accomplish any goal, I decided to rethink the situation.
I’d tried books, gift cards, magazines and other stuff before, but I never had a reward that really stuck with me. The magazine was read, the gift card spent, so on and so forth. I’ve struggled to find anything that I would find both rewarding and encouraging.
I sat back and looked at myself. Not always a pretty prospect but valuable nonetheless. With the kind of person I am, I needed something fun and pretty to keep me attracted. But I also needed something permanent – not a book I would read and be done with or something that would be spent and gone. Whatever ‘it’ was, it needed to stick with me.
And, knowing me, (here’s the not so pretty part), I needed it to be in my face as much as possible. I get distracted. I get emotional. My head often has one or more cast of characters for whatever novel I’m working on in it. Being healthy isn’t always first on my plate. However, having a visual reminder either on my desk or on my body would have it right there nearly all the time.
Taking that all into account, I came to getting a charm bracelet with charms and beads to mark my progress. It’s pretty and fun, something permanent, something that marks my progress and something that will almost always be within my eyesight.
You might think that buying all the charms first up might take away the pleasure, but I don’t get to wear the charms until I reach the corresponding goal. That is enough to keep me going and working toward the next mark.
In the end, I’m quite proud of myself. It took some time and self-examination, but I think I have come up with something that will prove to be a good motivation.
Now only .8 lbs to go until I reach my first goal…
PS. These charms are the ohm symbol and the hamsa. Combined for strength, serenity, peace and protection.
Category: Rewards
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Mar
05
Woo! I have new ticker. Haha. I was doing some virtual dusting around here and remembered how much I just to like tickers and that sort of thing. I also remembered how messed up I can be with numbers, so I decided just the ticker is more than enough.
Things have been going along nicely, as you can tell from my silence. I finished up my stress management course and am the better for it. I must admit that I did go in thinking that they wouldn’t be able to teach me much, but I did get more into the importance of breathing. That alone has helped me since with dealing with situations that give me anxiety. All up, a good thing.
I’ve had the first half of the pain management course, which set me off a little emotion-wise because I feel like I don’t deserve to be there. My aches and pains are weight-related, while many of the people there are dealing with accident recovery and complications due to aging. I’m nearly always the youngest one in the room.
I try to acknowledge the feelings and then let them drift by, though, because I reckon I’m there because someone thinks I need to be there. Done and dusted.
I had my first session at the gym there as well. I tried not to go ‘mind reader’, but I got the feeling that the instructor was a little confused as to why I was there. But then I explained my personality (all in until I injure myself) and my history, and things seemed to go well from there. I could swear we barely did anything, but I am feeling quite sore.
It’s been nearly a month since I started my food diary, and I’m managing to keep up with it. I think this is the longest I’ve kept one, to be honest. It does have me thinking more about balance, what/how much I’m eating, etc, so it’s all good.
All up, things are going pretty well. The weight loss so far has been entirely through food diary and what I like to call ‘calorie awareness’. I’m excited to see what happens when I add in the gym work.
Category: Checking In
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