rowyn | January in Review

Health/Fitness
[Content note: I actually talk about weight and calories and such in this one.]

This year, my health insurer started paying for a weight loss program called "RealAppeal".

I am, on the one hand, not much interested in weight loss anymore. Years ago, one of my friends described me as "smokin' hot", and whenever I think about my appearance, this is the line that comes to mind. It's a valuation that has become independent of objective reality in my head. "Everyone who I would be interested in already finds me attractive. My weight is irrelevant."

Beyond that, weight as a measure of overall fitness is highly suspect. I have been exercising regularly for about 15 years now, while generally gaining a few pounds a year. I am fitter now than I was when I was 60 pounds lighter back in the late 90s. Medical professionals tend to blame everything on "patient is overweight", and the accordingly lowered standard of care fat people get may contribute more to poor health outcomes for them than any actual weight-related issues.

On the other hand, my diet is terrible. I don't mean "I eat too much", I mean "I survive mostly on sugar and fat." And my health insurance company is not paying for this program out of charity or kindness. They are a business; they would not pay for RealAppeal if they did not believe, based on evidence, that RealAppeal would improve the insurer's bottom line by improving the health of their customers. (My insurer may well be wrong about this! They're run by humans with the same biases as all other humans. But they are definitely not doing it because they think I'd be pretty if I just lost a few pounds.)

So I signed up for it -- it's free, I can always quit, why not?

The emphasis on weight loss is just as annoying as I thought it would be. I feel like RealAppeal is negging me: "take a picture of yourself now so you can see how much better you look after losing weight!"

I am SMOKIN' HOT RIGHT NOW, RealAppeal, and nothing you or a camera says will change that.

SMOKIN' HOT.

However! Despite this, I actually like the program so far.

It has weekly online classes, which I thought was going to be super annoying ("ugh, stuck in front of a computer watching a video for 45 minutes?") But their mobile app can play the online classes, so I go for a walk while I watch/listen to the class. The classes are with the same people and the same coach every week (you are encouraged to stick with your time slot, although you can take a make-up class if you miss one). My coach, Cass, is adorable, fun to listen to, and very relatable. She has struggled with bad eating habits too. She was talking about one of the tactics for staying on track -- "write down your motivation somewhere that you'll see it" -- and that the motivation can be very personal. Hers had been a note on her fridge: "Are you hungry? :)" And I thought that was great: at once an invitation to eat if you ARE hungry, and a gentle reminder that if you're not hungry maybe food is not the fix for whatever problem you do have.

You can also schedule 1-on-1 time with your coach if you want to discuss specific issues or just for bonding. I am a big believer in the power of bonding to promote good habits, so I feel like the existence of a coach who is invested in me eating well and exercising is useful by itself.

The site has a tracker, which is much less annoying to use than the last few times I tried food trackers. With the exception of meals from restaurants that aren't chains, it's had all the food I eat already in it. Generally, I can just type part of a name, pick what I had off a picklist, and set the portion size, and I'm done.

Moreover, I love having data and graphs and charts, so it's something I get a kick out of having done.

So I've been tracking what I eat for a couple of weeks. I already tracked exercise through Google Fit. Tracking leads to me eating a little less junk food: there is the act of thinking "do I actually want this or am I just eating it out of habit?" which leads to the occasional "yeah, I don't actually want this" in response.

The program lets you set your own targets, and the competing information is deeply amusing to me.

Video on calorie targets: "Women should set a target between 1200-1500 depending on how active you are!"

Me: "Nopenopenope" *nopetopuses on out of here*

Website, looking at my specific height/weight/exercise levels: "How's 2000-2200 calories sound?"

Me: "Okay that's fine."

I guess the "guideline" targets are aimed at the "I need to see VISIBLE RESULTS IMMEDIATELY or I will give up." But the last time I set calorie targets like that, I (a) soon hated tracking (b) also having to think about what I was eating all the time and (c) didn't lose weight anyway.

So I set my calorie target at 2000, in case I get lazier about exercise, and told the site I wanted to lose 0.25 pounds a week (the smallest number it allows).

In general, I've been either walking or dancing every day for 45-60 minutes, and eating between 1600-1900 calories. I have chosen not to eat food that I would have otherwise had, because it would put me over my target. Like yesterday I got a "pick two" and a frozen mocha from Panera, and then realized this is Too Much Food, so I took the soup and roll home as leftovers instead of eating them.

I have not, at any point, thought "I'm hungry and this takes too much willpower."

I've lost three pounds, much to my surprise. I'm not sure how that happened? This may just be the initial "oh it's a diet you're allowed to lose a couple pounds" before my body adjusts to the new normal and stops losing weight.

But since my actual goal is "exercise and eat better": as long as those things are happening, I don't care about the scale. 95% of why I am weighing myself is that the program asks me to, and since I don't care, I might as well make them happy.

Oh, for anyone curious: I started at 183 lbs and am currently 180 lbs.

Writing
I finished the initial draft of The Twilight Etherium! My belief that "the second half will be shorter" was way more accurate than I thought it would be. First half: 74,400 words. Second half: 28,500. Total word count: 102,900.

So the book ended up right in the 100-120k range, same as the other Etherium books. AW YEAH. I am pleased. Also glad to have the first draft done. And also thinking next book I will try to estimate word count per bullet point instead of "eh, historically each bullet point is around 1500ish words" because while that was still right ON AVERAGE, it was wackily far off when it came to estimating how much book was left on this one.

The Business of Writing
NEW BOOK RELEASE WOOOO! Frost and Desire is now out in the wild. I love this book, y'all. ❤️

I also did some more revisions on The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince. I crossed of another 12 items on the planned changes list. 23 more to go!

Gaming
As predicted last month, Pokemon Go play remains way down. I'm still level 38. I will probably make 39 sometime in February; I have one last friend who regularly opens gifts to get to Best Friends status, and that'll pretty much push me over. But I suspect I won't make level 40 until late this year, assuming I don't just quit entirely. On the other hand, spring and summer weather may make playing more appealing.

Happiness
I was pretty glum for a week or so this month, but my mood turned around a couple of weeks ago and I've been upbeat since then. It's nice.

Report Card for January Goals
* Care for Lut: yup, did that
* Finish 17 more bullet points on The Twilight Etherium: finished 37 points and the whole draft. CRUSHED IT.
* And/or finish 17 bullet points on the editing list for The Princess, Her Dragon and Their Prince, or some combination of these two: only did 12, but this was an "in combination with the above" so this is all gravy.
* Release Frost and Desire: done!
* Spend 15 hours reading stuff that I didn't write. Books, graphic novels, blog posts, articles, and short stories all count. Twitter, Discord, and Tootplanet do not. Lol nope. I caught up on my Dreamwidth feed, which is nice, and I tried reading some books without making much progress. But I didn't even try to track my time spent reading and I'm confident it didn't make it to half an hour a day. This should be easy. I don't know why it isn't anymore. MEH.

Goals for February
* Care for Lut
* Finish revisions on Princess and send to first readers
* Think about next book(s)

I haven't solidified what I'm writing next yet. I am most inclined to write an EXTREMELY QUEER prequel to The Moon Etherium, but since I don't have a solid concept for it yet, I'm not committed. I am farther along on my year's work than I expected to be at this point, so I'm not concerned, either.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

terrycloth

I don't think I've opened Pokemon Go in a week because I keep running out of item space and if you can't spin pokestops, what's even the point?

Oh, and the problem I always have with tracking food is they always want portion sizes, and I have no idea what 6 oz. of anything looks like. Can't I just vaguely describe the meal? "I had some spaghetti."

Edited Date: 2019-02-01 05:45 pm (UTC)

From:

rowyn

You're supposed to use up your items catching pokemon and then you need to spin stops? n_n

I used to throw out a lot of stuff, but now that I'm not sending and receiving 20 gifts a day I don't have the item storage problem. (Also I expanded my item storage by a redonk amount because I got sick of not having room and having to throw things away.) I get way more potions of all kinds than I need, tho.

Yeah, with food I make at home I mostly weigh or measure it unless it's something convenient like "this frozen dinner that I ate all of/half of." With chain restaurants, the app will recognize the dish and how many calories it has, so I can just say what % of it I ate.

With buffets and non-chain restaurants it's just guessing, tho. :|

From:

terrycloth

I actively dislike gym battles and no gym battles means no coins and no coins means no item space.

From:

rowyn

I bought coins early on, figuring I was playing it enough to merit it. But I don't hate gym battles that much, either.

From:

anke

I'm trying to count calories for the first time in my life this month. I have no clue how well this will work.
But I do think I can manage a general goal of "more veggies, less fat and sugar".
And I'll be trying to get more exercise.
I find it hard X(

From:

rowyn

I can give you exercise advice, or just listen if you want to talk about what makes exercise challenging for you. n_n

From:

anke

Maybe thinking about why it's giving me trouble might work. So.

1) It's against my Habits, and making new Habits is hard. (habit: being at home when not at work or shopping, because outside is kinda scary because People? Or maybe I'm lazy? Probably both.)

2) Logistics. There is so much Work involved. Going to the gym is not only the time spent at the gym, it's also time spent packing gym clothes, and getting there. Going to the gym before work means I'd carry around a damp towel and sweaty clothes all day, after work it's more crowded. And I need some time to get back home, too.

3) I get sweaty and red-faced when I exercise, and I'm scared People will use that as an excuse to harrass me.

4) Exercising is Unpleasant. It's exhausting, it's messy, and it can even get painful.

5) It's time I could spend on other things.

6) There's no immediate benefit. With other unpleasant, strenous things, like marathon cleaning or clearing snow off the sidewalk, I can see results immediately. With exercise there are supposed to be long-time benefits if I manage to keep it up regularly, but since I've never managed to keep it up for more than two or three weeks, I've never really seen those benefits.
So why bother? I haven't managed to keep it up in the past, why would this time be different? *headdesk*

From:

rowyn

So why bother? I haven't managed to keep it up in the past, why would this time be different?

Reading this made me realize that I have at least two separate experiences that match it.

1) From when I was 13-14 until I was 33, I had been trying and failing to write a book. I failed at this SO MANY TIMES.
2) During almost the same period, I tried, again and again, to get into the habit of exercising. Sometimes it lasted for several months, but I spent a lot more months/years not exercising at all than I did exercising.

And every time I decided to do it and then failed, it became harder to decide to do it again.

But -- here's the important bit -- there was, eventually, that attempt that WORKED. I have written 12 books now and published 9. I have been getting regular exercise for 14-15 years.

So yes, speaking from experience, THIS TIME ABSOLUTELY CAN BE DIFFERENT. That time in 2002 when I decided to start writing Prophecy again, and that point in 2004 when I decided to start exercising -- I didn't know that those times would be different from all my dozens of past failures, either. I just decided to try again and see what happened.

Anyway, HEREIN is the advice you didn't ask for. Please feel free to ignore the rest if you wanna. n_n

All advice is about the giver's experience, so when I say "you", I really mean "me", but it might work for you too, never know.

These are my two favorite mantras for exercise:

* The best kind of exercise is the kind you will do
* Any exercise is better than no exercise

The first part means "don't decide that the exercise you like is 'not good enough' and you need to do a Better Kind of Exercise that you hate". If you like walking and hate jogging, then walk. If you like biking and hate rowing machines, bike. It doesn't matter if Exercise Y burns more calories or gets results faster than Exercise X: if you hate doing Y, you are not going to do Y. Just do X. You will be happier and you will be more willing to stick with it.

If you don't know any kinds of exercise that you like, there's always looking for new forms of exercise you haven't tried before. I wanted to learn how to dance back in 2004, so I got a book on dance exercises and practiced them in my living room. I've also tried martial arts for exercise. Any activity that you're interested in and that gets your body moving is worth a try. You don't need to do the scariest form of it, either. Signing up for a class or a gym was way too much effort for me and getting a book was much less intimidating. You might find exercise DVDs fit better into your life, as another possibility.

Finding things you can do while you exercise is also very helpful. If you like listening to audiobooks or podcasts, exercising is a great time to do it. Watching TV or videos can also work, depending on your set up. I used to write on my phone while using my stationary bike. I play Pokemon GO while I'm out walking or biking, and there are other exercise-incentive games you could try. Anyway, combining "thing you wanted to do anyway" with "exercise" can be a great way to make it easier to find the time to exercise, because you won't feel like it's taking time away from other activities.

On the "any exercise is better than no exercise" front: don't psych yourself out of starting by thinking "I don't want to spend 30 whole minutes on this". Do it for 5. Do it for 2. Anything is better than nothing.

From:

archangelbeth

The best kind of exercise is the kind you will do

Yup. I can walk walk walk walk walk (preferably on treadmills, honestly), in reasonably comfortable shoes, and either short sleeves or layers I can shed as I get heated. And read while I do it.

A stationary bike would probably screw up my knees if I were not very careful, now. *sadface* Running would futz up my knees, no question.

But I can walk at 2-3 miles an hour, and I get a little sweaty, but I don't actually even have to change clothes. (When walking with the kid at the gym, on their track, we hang up our coats, and then I'm in my layers. And the first layer that goes is the cardigan or velour jacket, and then I bind my hair back in a pony tail so it's not heating me up (longhair!), and the rest is only minorly annoying.)

Walkwalkwalkwalk.

From:

rowyn

Why would a stationary bike mess with your knees? o_O

I should note that I have a recumbent stationary bike -- the seat is pretty much a regular chair you sit back in, which is why I could read and write while using it. There is no point in sitting in one of those uncomfortable bicycle seats for a stationary bike. :D

From:

archangelbeth

My knees are kinda screwed up, basically. Pushing down from a bent-knee to straight knee with resistance is very very risky for me. (Yes, climbing stairs up or down can be an issue; I've been known to go up on my toes to reduce the knee work when going up, or gripping the railing & "jumping" down a stair at a time.)

Sent from my iPhone

From:

rowyn

Yikes! D:

From:

archangelbeth

Yeah, they are not good knees; I tried one of the stationary bikes at the gym one time & my knees were a little angry.

I need to lose some weight to help my knees get better. (They are better after all the walking! They only hurt sometimes after I go up stairs!)

(It is possible that I have some ultramild hypermobility issue. My ankles have been known to roll for no good reason, and I have a sliiiightly hyper-extend ability on my knuckles. This, plus some college fencing where I did RSI my knees, is a likely culprit...)

Sent from my iPhone

From:

rowyn

If you have power issues with your phone, you can also get external batteries to recharge from. n_n

From:

archangelbeth

Right, my kid does that. I'm a skinflint. >_>

Sent from my iPhone

From:

rowyn

Yeah, part of my motivation to stay active is to keep my knees from falling apart the way my mother's did. D:

From:

archangelbeth

*solidarity fistbump* Knees are a pain in the... um, the cliched saying falls apart here. >_>

From:

anke

I really wish I had room for a treadmill at home. Then I could walk while watching video.

From:

rowyn

Is the problem with getting a treadmill space or cost or both?

From:

anke

More space than cost. Like, I wouldn't want to spend more than 400 euros, but the thing is that I live in a one-room flat, and have a lot of Stuff, and yeah. Space is definitely the bigger problem.

From:

rowyn

You can get folding treadmills, so that they have a small footprint when not in use, and even folding ones with wheels so you can wheel them into a closet. But yeah, if you have a lot of Stuff already that is not a good solution. :|

From:

anke

hm, yeah. Seems like looking for a treadmill for a walking desk might prove fruitful.
I have other things I want to get first, but it's back on my list. Thank :)

From:

rowyn

Oh yeah, a walking desk is great! Especially if you have a laptop you can use from the couch, so that you can use that instead if you don't have the energy to stand. ❤

From:

archangelbeth

I have been known to watch stuff on my phone -- at the gym, that'd take WiFi, headphones, & a power cable, but all the gym treadmills I've seen (including in hotels!) tend to have USB charging options! (Which I might be iffy on using except on the up-to-date iPhone, b/c security, but there might be power outlets around, too, that they normally plug vacuum cleaners into...)

Books also good! 😇

Sent from my iPhone

From:

anke

I was about to say that the machines at my gym didn't have USB ports, but they got new ones that do. I have no clue if they are for charging or just for software updates on the machines. If they'Re for charging, is that a "walk faster to charge faster" deal? XD

I forgot to check if they offer WiFi...

From:

archangelbeth

Pretty sure they'd charge? I mean, the treadmills are plugged in; those ain't running off internal batteries!

Give it a shot, say I!

Sent from my iPhone

From:

anke

Yeah... I like walking (oh man, am I homesick for living somewhere where I could be on a forest path in 15 minutes, and having the time to go for long walks), the problem is the time there. Just going into a gym in street clothes doesn't seem like an option with my gym.

I like gym better than jogging on the street, because it seems more socially acceptable there to be all sweaty.
On the "lower the wall" front for going to the gym, today I made little packages each consisting of a pair of shorts, a towel, a set of underwear, and a t-shirt, so I just have to grab 3 things (those clothes, a pair of shoes, and a bottle) to pack for a gym visit, rather than 7.

From:

terrycloth

I... would have to recommend against the vague approach. The last time I tried it I gained 20 pounds after burning through all my willpower to no effect.

Failing a diet is really bad, so you don't want to half-ass it.

From:

rowyn

I have done vague "I will exercise more" or "I will eat more veggies" or "I will stop eating when I'm not hungry" approaches without causing any harm. I didn't lose much if any weight doing any of that, but it generally did work for me insofar as getting more exercise / eating more veggies goes. I am sure there is a lot of individual variation there. :)

From:

anke

If I don't allow myself to vague it, I will drop it as soon as I lapse a tiny bit, so there would be no point in starting.

From:

tuftears

Purrsonally I got my lipids blood test done (I get this once a year) and my triglycerides are high so I'm going to try changing my diet by trying to have fish once a week (I don't normally cook it or eat it in the Google cafeterias) and hopefully upping my exercise. This is going to be something of a challenge on willpower.