**TRIGGER WARNING** **TRIGGER WARNING** **TRIGGER WARNING** **TRIGGER WARNING**

I have been very lucky in my life. I have not had any trauma specifically affecting me, my body, my direct life. No major injuries, no sudden job loss, only the kind of minor sexual assault every girl experiences (and, apparently, the President of Mexico). A residual fear of crowds and mobs that makes me cautious about going to protests or even festivals. And of course I shared the deep national trauma of 9/11, in a fairly personal way.

But people I love have had unexpected sudden death or catastrophic injuries.  And, while all of those deeply affected me emotionally at the time (and in retrospect), only a few had immediate direct impact on my daily life. Those are the ones that still grab me, hold me, come up unexpectedly and punch me in my nose. 

When  I was in grad school, in 1980, one of my dearest friends was murdered on her doorstep on a Saturday night. Horrible, but it got worse. There appeared to be a serial killer abroad. Or, perhaps it was someone I knew. My roommates and friends and I were interviewed, fingerprinted (for exclusion purposes they said, we had been in her apartment and driven her car), and interviewed again and again. We supported her family, my first personal experience of dealing with the mundane aftermath of death, packing up her things, organizing a memorial service. My grades plummeted. Three out of four semesters in the top 10% of my class, one semester barely getting by.  For the better part of a year, I didn't sleep the whole night through, but existed in a kind of split shift. Bed early, up after midnight for hours doing school work, back to bed as the sun came up. I graduated, left town with no resolution of who done it, and life moved on and into a more normal pattern.

A couple of years later, I was living in Ohio, and sleeping at my boyfriend's house. I was drifting off as he watched the 11 o'clock news in the bedroom. Suddenly, I jerked awake as I heard "authorities say the suspect may have been responsible for a string of murders of women in Michigan and Texas". Just that. I was too late to hear more, but I lay rigidly awake all that night. The next night, I was again drifting off when my boyfriend came into the bedroom. I jerked awake, and all I knew was I wasn't dreaming, there was actually someone there, not my imagination. I screamed! I shrieked enough and so loud that the neighbors all turned on their lights and checked  their yards. I quickly settled, but it was the start of another long spell of sleep disrupted nights. The following day, my phone rang. My old roommate in Ann Arbor said, "Yes, they've got him."

From time to time I've toyed with the idea of writing in more detail about this, and I thought that maybe now, in my old age, it was time. Maybe pushed by finishing a novel that dealt with the aftermath of trauma, I thought about it for a while this morning. Write about my friend and our friendship, and our circle of friends. Recount the immediate events, maybe look at my shelf of journals to find what I wrote at the time, make it clear finally -- not the resolution, there can never be that -- but who killed her and what happened to him. Tell it as a story. Put a bow on it. Be sure others know about her and what happened. Thinking about it, I wondered if there was a picture of my friend on the web. I was curious if I could find details of her family, wondering how they had gotten on. 

I was startled to find a recent (this year) documentary about the killer. I didn't read enough to find out if the whole series was about him, or just the episode. With shaking fingers, I bookmarked the site, and closed the tab so I wouldn't stumble on it accidentally. I was gasping for breath. Panicking. 

I fell back on my mindfulness training: Just breathe. Close your eyes and feel the breath. Let feeling the breath fill your mind. What does it feel like? Where do you feel it? Just sit with it, inhabit it. After a few moments, feeling calmer, try visiting the emotions that drove this panic. Let the emotion come. You are safe. You are in a safe place. Feel what you feel. How does it actually feel? Can you name your feelings? Where do you feel them? Just sit with it. Don't push it away, but let it come. You'll be fine, because you are really safe. If it's too much, return to the breath. You are fine. You are safe. You are sad, but that's ok. You are fine. As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong. Just breathe.

This has been the hardest thing for me, actually allowing myself to feel my feelings. Not just now, but for years. My brief foray into therapy with a mindfulness twist let me finally get there.

The unexpected reminder of trauma is traumatic. Trigger warnings are a real and necessary thing. As "woke" becomes an object of scorn (not among you, my dear readers, I know) so have trigger warnings been subject to derision. But finding a level of detail and images about my friend set me off today, even though I initiated the search. It's taken me three hours to write this, with breaks for walking around and dipping into more breath meditation. I'm pissed at how much I'm blowing my nose, when I thought I was almost done with my head cold of this week. But I felt a need to capture this moment, not to just move on.

I may write more about this. But I'll do it with plenty of warnings for myself in place. It'll be some work, not just the writing of my own thoughts, but having to do research to ground my memories in facts. Something to tackle gradually, not all at once.

But today will be a fine day. I have several projects planned, and a neighborhood get together to cap it off. Excelsior! 

 

Stronger Next Year

My gym! Rowing machine along the back.
I just installed the bar to help with balance exercises.

I did not have a great year physically. It started with recovering from my knee surgery, carried on through a summer of increased migraines and still not up to snuff on my knees, and crashed and burned as a result of my vigorous (but fun!) sailing vacation, where I injured my rotator cuff and generally burned out my whole body.

Through it all I tried to keep moving and working out in my basement gym. (I love my basement gym, and I enjoy working with my personal trainer there.) But there were definitely days on the couch where I hardly left the house. I felt old. I felt feeble. I was fat, and nothing I did seemed to affect that. I woke every morning feeling like the Old Red Woman, bent over, stiff, wobbly, and in pain. I felt frustrated that my body was so frail. I was preparing myself for a new reality of being old and feeble. I told myself that I actually was old, almost seventy years old. Any time there was a news article that another celebrity had died, the first thing I did was check their age. So many of them younger than me!

But by late fall, I felt myself getting better. Stronger. More capable. Actually doing things. Feeling competent and capable. Walking still did not feel good, but I adjusted and spent more time in my home gym working with weights or my rowing machine or on the stationary bike my BIL gave me. I went back to the mental disciplines I had learned over the years of dealing with pain, meditating and observing the pain with kind curiosity. I had some adventures, on the water and on the scoot. I had some actual good days, where I woke up feeling good. Not stiff. Not bent over. Not feeble. Ready to face the day, get out there and do things.

The election results hit me like a gut punch. As I got out of bed the following morning, I was initially fine, but by the time I had walked the length of the house to let the dogs out, my back had tightened into a full fledged spasm. SPROING! I was bent over, leaning on furniture like a toddler doing her first cruise around the house. I pulled out my tool kit, things I know, deep down in my body and mind, to be true. First, mentally: "there is nothing wrong with you. You are safe. You are fine. Yes, the back is clenched, but it's not broken. Yes, the world has gone to shit, but you are safe. Your body is safe." Then I started my series of exercises/ stretches that I know deep down are going to help. I also reached for the tylenol, because comfort is an important part of feeling safe. 

This worked! It took a couple of weeks - the back clenched every morning for a while - but it got fainter, and gradually went away.

Around this same time, my primary care doctor told me that based on my testing, I have great lung capacity and a strong heart, but I have shit endurance. She prescribed aerobic exercise, specific amounts at specific heart rate levels of effort. The next week, my neurologist reinforced this - certain levels of aerobic exercise seem to have a protective effect on migraines.

The view my trainer has from my phone while we video.
I have all the toys! I bought my first weights in 1995,
and I've been adding equipment ever since.

So I'm all in on the cardio now, added to my twice-weekly strength training and daily warm up stretches. I have the devices to keep me going indoors this winter- a rowing machine, a (bottom-of-the-line no bells-or-whistles) stationary bike. I have a mini trampoline in front of my TV. And I dusted off my original, built of wood in Minnesota, Nordic Track ski machine from 1993! Using the NT was the first time in my life I enjoyed indoor cardio, back in the day. It needs refurbishment, but it turns out that while the old ski machines are no longer made, there are enthusiasts and through a sub-reddit I found a guy who sells refurbishment kits with the most common replaceable parts! It's on my list to get it fixed up - probably a few hours work.

I found that walking can't get my heart rate up high enough to meet my PCP's exercise prescription. I try hustling along, but the heart stays stubbornly beating slowly. Only up very steep hills does it go up- and I can't currently sustain that for long enough. This all may change as I get more aerobically fit.

Report Card

 The last time I published a report card was in January of last year, looking at 2022. I actually have kept up tracking myself primarily through apps and devices, and from time to time I sit down and go through the data trying to glean some meaning or insights. I haven't felt like I've learned that much recently, certainly not something worth sharing. I still haven't got any wisdom to share, and it's not that pretty a picture, but the data is what the data is, and there is a certain value in simply showing it. Keeps me honest with myself.

First, to get it out of the way, my weight is high and stable. No need to share a graph. I gained a bunch of weight in 2022 (Fuck You, Intuitive Eating!) and it's stayed on. I haven't been motivated to any kind of a big push to change it. And it's been remarkably stable - plus or minus four pounds. I do plan and track my food most days, but it's more part of planning how to spend my time than trying to morph it into fewer calories. And then, keeping me conscious of what I'm doing, to do away with mindless eating. I still weigh myself every day and it gets recorded on the internet, for whenever I feel like reviewing the history in detail. I chuckled one day recently when I got up and peed several times during the night and found the next morning I was two and a half pounds down from the day before! That's why I can't get excited about day-to-day fluctuations, the range I'm seeing is just water weight. 

First up: Activity. As always, darker is better. January was knee recovery time, and I give myself a pass for everything but workout days. My "workout days" focus on functional fitness, either in my home gym or with physical therapy (my PT experience the past couple of years has been a solid hour of working out followed by 15 minutes of massage and stretching). With PT from the knee replacement added to working out in the home gym, I was really doing a lot. It also paid off, as now my calories and steps are back to where they were last year (which was NOT a stellar year for activity, I admit). The walking mileage shown here is from taking a deliberate walk where I activate my GPS, not an accumulation of steps during the day. I'm currently pretty active in the house and garden, which keeps my steps up, but I haven't been feeling the walk as a way to spend time (and I only do short and slow training walks with the dog, not worth tracking.) I've added a new row since the last time I posted, "stand time". My apple watch tracks this - how much time do I spend on my feet all day. It seems worth looking at, since my goals involve being less sedentary. Here, I'm moving in the right direction!

Next, some health parameters. These are both controllable and uncontrollable things. The big worrying trend is migraines, which are up. I have fallen off the meditation bandwagon, and that might be a contributing factor. But my doctor thinks that perhaps allergies are acting up - and there is a connection between respiratory inflammation and migraines. So I'm trying to be more faithful on OTC allergy remedies. "Alone days" (still looking for a better descriptor) are days I don't talk to anyone. I might be texting or emailing, but it only counts if I talk to someone either in person or on the phone. I really enjoy days on my own, but I am aware it is not healthy to have too many. And besides, I enjoy my family, friends and neighbors! I continue to be a sleep champion, with a normal seasonal variation of less sleep with longer daylight hours. (These sleep hours are separate from time in bed, as the watch purports to distinguish between lying awake versus truly asleep. I am awake at least 45 minutes during the course of the night - but apparently, that is less than average for a woman my age.) Heart rate variability is meant to be an overall measure of stress, with a high number being better. I haven't been looking too much at it, but the apple watch keeps track, so I decided to add it to the list. Resting heart rate, as a reminder, measures resiliency, with a lower number better.

Lastly, how do I spend my leisure time? (Ok, it's all leisure time. I do a minor amount of volunteer work, but I'm not tracking that here.) This whole category is not necessarily "more is better", but it is what it is. I also struggle with whether the "year" column should show an average of the months, or a cumulative total for the year. It's currently a mixed bag. I've actually wanted to read fewer books this year, because I read a lot of fluffy entertainment and it gets in the way of doing more productive things. My TV watching is up recently, as I indulged myself with a season of my only reality TV show, "Below Decks". I haven't been watching movies, neither at home nor out. I have been traveling a modest amount this year, more shorter trips, which is suiting me right now. And I'm hoping for more sailing, as my partner has retired, which multiplies the number of possibilities of aligning our two schedules and the weather.

So that's the story in numbers. Looking at this does motivate me to move, so I'm off to do that now.

Excelsior!

New Knee!

 I'm very optimistic at the moment. Could drugs have something to do with that? Maybe? But drugs are part of the protocol, I'm supposed to be taking them!

Prep for the operation started well before Tuesday. I had a bunch of pre-op appointments to get cleared, and then there were elaborate instructions about cleaning myself the night before and morning of the operation, showers and special microbiome killing sponges to wipe everywhere. Surgery was scheduled for 8 am, but I had to be there two hours early. My BIL picked me up on the dot of 5 am, and followed me through the registration process. There became a standard call-and-response at every single stop - at least a dozen times that morning:  "What is your name?" "When were you born?" "Are you allergic to anything?". I had a qr code on my wristband that was scanned at every step.

In preop, (more wiping with special sponges), many people came by to introduce themselves. My surgeon came, (he signed my leg), a resident, a med student, and three or four members of the anesthesia team. ("What is your name?, etc., again!)

BIL stayed with me until they put the IV in, before starting the sedation. I gave up my phone, and they gave me a spinal block. By the time they wheeled me into the operating room, I was dead from the waist down. I couldn't feel a thing. The operating room was startling to me, not at all like Grey's Anatomy. Stark white, brilliant florescent lighting, almost shabby ceiling retrofitted with electrical mains and heating vents (my main view) and the room was really large - maybe they would have two patients in there at once? (BTW, they are opening a brand new surgical center next week, this was the swan song for the old side.) There seemed to be a lot of people in there! Shortly after arrival, they stuck my IV with sedation, and I was out.

I woke up still in the OR, still dead from the waist down. Whoever talked to me then said things went really well, and confirmed it was the partial (not a full) knee replacement, yay! I got wheeled down to recovery, where I stayed for a while, long enough to have two nurses because of a shift change. The goal for recovery, said the nurse, was to be able to bend both knees, raise both legs, and wiggle all my toes. Then they could move me on into a room, since I was going to be admitted. She raised my leg to demonstrate, and it was very disorienting to see my leg and feel nothing from its visible movements.

At first, recovery was AWFUL! I had the most awful shakes, shivering all over. Actually, the spinal block was still in effect so I have no idea if I was shivering below the waist. But above, my goodness! It came in waves, with a build-up, peak, and rapid fall-off. I tried to retreat to my mindfulness techniques, focused on my breathing, and that worked great in between the episodes, but when my body was uncontrollably shaking that was all I could think about. But then, sensation began to come back to my legs. First tingles, then the nurse said I was wiggling my toes. It was the weirdest thing - trying consciously to send a message to my toes to wiggle, and feeling no feedback that I was successful. But slowly, slowly, the feelings came back as the shivers abated. I got curious, and explored where I had feelings and what movements I could execute with my legs. It helped. All told, from shivers to feeling back in my legs, was about an hour. They had added a nerve block for the knee to take effect as the spinal block wore off, and so there was a magic moment when I felt great - zero pain! No shivers! And then they brought lunch, and I was hungry and scarfed down every bite. Then I realized I could have my stuff back and I got my kindle and phone and ipad, no boredom ever.

While still in recovery the PT folks came and got me up. It was good timing, I needed to pee, and really didn't want to use a bed pan. So I walked with a walker to the bathroom, and then to a stairwell, where I climbed two stairs - a hurdle I'd have to get into the house. When I got back to my bed, I was exhausted and in pain.

Finally I went up to the room. The nurses were really good at writing names down on the little white board in my room, I really appreciate that. Sadly, it was a very small double room and I had a fractious, noisy room-mate. We weren't allowed to close the door, so noise and light were constant. By the time dinner arrived, I had lost my appetite and "discomfort" had grown to pain. Over the course of the night, I had enormous heartburn pain, nausea, and stomach cramps. I had brought my noise-cancelling over-the-ear headphones, and a silk eyeshade, and that's the only reason I got any sleep at all. I listen to books, and all night I would tee up a chapter, close my eyes, and hope for sleep by the time the chapter was done. But I would open my eyes to realize my roommate was making a phone call (to Australia?) or complaining about something, or simply moaning. Of course, they came in to check vitals, give me drugs, and generally keep me from getting any rest. So I slept maybe twenty minutes at a time?

The following morning, I was awake at 5 and so was my roommate. But after the escorted trip to the bathroom and a new set of drugs, I actually got some deep sleep! An hour or two at least. All day, my knee hurt, but less than my stomach. They had added an anti-nausea med and also tums, and maybe that helped. I had PT and OT folks visiting, and they told me what to focus on for the next week, until I start PT. Two of my surgeon's residents stopped by, and they each emphasized how well the operation went. I mean, their eyes were glowing! I hope that bodes well for recovery. The hospital sent me home with twenty pages of discharge information and four pill bottles (to be supplemented with two OTC drugs at home). Helpfully, the medication instructions included the timing for the next dose of each. 

BIL, who had checked in on me many times, took me home. It was so nice to be swarmed by the doggos! He heated up some soup for me, but I couldn't manage more than a few swallows. I hurt all over. But I verified I could walk with the walker throughout the first floor, get into and out of bed, and go to the bathroom. BIL courageously stood by in case I needed him, but I didn't. Shortly, I took to my bed. In a few hours, my friend came over for the night, and it was comforting to have someone there, even if I didn't need them to do anything specific. Restless and uncomfortable all night, with intermittent books, but I took joy in the fact I could actually roll over to one side, off my back. (Other side not available yet.)

Another friend, who lives a ways away, came down later on Thursday. She made supper, and we watched a movie (NYAD! See it!). I was in bed by 7:30 pm (despite a couple of naps during the day). Again, a restless night, but at least five hours sleep (with ten hours in bed) according my tracking device.

Managing the medication is the hardest thing. I can take six different drugs, have to take at least three, and they all have different timings and limits. So of course I made a chart and I write it down. I am slightly addled from the pain meds, and I find I might not remember having taken a pill minutes after I did. So I am assiduous at checking them off. I am cautious on the strongest pain med, because it makes me woozy. I'm writing under its influence now, so please let me know if there is something here that's inappropriate. But by backing off some on the optional meds, I have got my stomach back under control, and my appetite is back. The fact is, the pain meds work, and if I don't take them there is a risk I'll do much less movement, which is bad in itself. So I'm taking less than the max, but not swearing them off completely. 

Today feels better than yesterday. I took a shower! (Hand wand and sitting on a stool.) No naps today, planning on a good night's sleep. Hopefully, tomorrow will feel better still.

Tidbits: Food and Eating

 Here's a few miscellaneous points, mostly about food and eating. I'm so aware of the privileges I have: both time and money to control most of what and when I eat. The tidbits below reflect where I am right now, not necessarily any kind of a model for me or anyone else.

• I'm really really trying on mindful eating. To that end, I am trying to break one very long-standing habit: I no longer read while eating alone, whether a meal or a snack. And I even try to avoid listening, at least to words (no podcasts, books or radio). I'm trying to concentrate on what I'm eating. I'm trying to slow down, smell and taste, really pay attention. As it turns out, rumination can take me away just as completely as some books, but I am continually trying to come back to the food - what am I eating, how do I feel in my body as I eat? I've been living alone for 42 years, for 42 years the majority of my meals have been alone, this is a huge habit for me!

• I am doubling down on Michael Pollan's advice:
  Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
  I think this covers what are right now termed "ultra-processed foods", which Pollan would call "food-like substances".  I'm not interested in cooking absolutely everything from scratch (I'm not going to bake my own bread or make my own yogurt or smoke my own bacon) but I am reading lots of labels and buying things with less processing. Fresh bread from the bakery, not packaged breads filled with fillers and preservatives. Tortilla chips made in the store, not shipped in the bag. And always, always, trying to eat more veggies.
  

• There are certain fresh foods that I pretty much only buy at the farmer's market when in season. Corn on the cob, peaches, and large tomatoes come to mind. I've not found store-bought versions, even fresh and labeled "local" to be any where as good. I do use frozen corn and canned tomatoes other times, but I won't bother buying fresh.

• Other veggies, like eggplants and broccoli and zucchini, are better at the farmer's market, but the difference seems less. However, I was shocked one time by the difference. Early in the summer, I bought a cute little cabbage at the market and shredded it and made a vinaigrette cole slaw to eat that day and it was so good I still remember it! Before that, cabbage would have been my poster child for "no difference". But cabbage still is acceptable as it gets old, just has to be treated differently.
  

• I live alone, and shopping is often an exercise in restraint. Fresh food doesn't keep long, that's just the way it is. I try to restrict myself to only one or two vegetables in a supermarket shopping trip, with a specific plan about what I will make when. I don't cook every day - often there are leftovers and even my schedule can get full - and so I have to pay close attention.  But I'm able to get to the store often, with my loose schedule.
  
  
• Restraint is much harder at the farmer's market, since there is so much that is so appetizing, it's only available for a short time, and I often am not able to get there every week. But, unless I'm sharing with others, two ears of corn (eat that night), four peaches (one a day), and three tomatoes (one a day) seems to avoid throwing things away.
   
• I don't want to cook elaborately very often. In the past, I often relied on convenience foods and bottled sauces to get dinner together quickly. I'm now trying to avoid bottled sauces because many of them contain odd ingredients. So I'm cooking from recipes more than I used to - but probably not more than once a week. I also strive to portion out and freeze meals from the leftovers because my tolerance for the same thing might be three days at most.
  
  
• I am aware I have a habit of getting involved in something in the afternoons and then in mid-afternoon realizing I'm very hungry and I don't have the energy or will to cook something from scratch. I'm tackling the habit by consciously trying to start cooking much earlier in the day, sometimes eating "dinner" in mid-afternoon. This also requires planning light meals or snacks for the early evening, so I don't grab the cookies.
  
  
• I do still buy convenience foods for when I'm tired and don't have leftovers. Frozen meals from Trader Joe's or Whole Foods still have long lists of ingredients but can be tasty. There is a line of frozen foods at Whole Foods, "Saffron Road", that has a very tasty lamb saag. And Trader Joe's has a saag paneer that is really good. But I'm much better at managing my own leftovers from the freezer, so the processed store bought ones are much less of my diet right now.
  
  
• I discovered I can air fry frozen vegetables right from the freezer! So much tastier than microwaved! That helps me add veggies to the diet when I don't have fresh ones hanging around. And I do indulge myself sometimes in the conveniently pre-cut veggies at Whole Foods, though the markup is appalling and makes me ashamed of myself. (It's not the money, per se, it's the laziness.) I know I won't cut up a butternut squash - way too much hard work - so I've been buying the cubed stuff. Today, I found a peeled-and-cut-in-half butternut, wrapped in plastic. It was half the price of the cubed stuff, so I'm going to give it a whirl.
  
• Finally, a recipe. This unusual chili is probably the most elaborate thing I make, though really it’s not that much. But it’s also got the most complex and intriguing tastes and textures of anything I make. I’ve made it several times, usually with fake vegan meat, though most recently with turkey since it was for just me. It lends itself to slow and mindful eating by virtue of its complexity and goodness. Highly recommended. https://www.washingtonpost.com/recipes/turkey-and-butternut-squash-chili/. (If the recipe is firewalled and you want it, let me know and I can put a copy in the comments.)

Let's Put 2022 to Bed

 Let's wrap this puppy up. While I didn't do a lot of posting about the metrics of my life, I did keep up my spreadsheets and graphs. I find it is helpful to have a "just the facts" look at how my life is unfolding. Memory is unreliable, and these numbers tell a story.

Here is 2022 by month, and yearly totals for the last four years. In general, darker is better. 
I put migraines in red and reversed this (darker is worse).  And in the bottom (yellow) section, I'm not sure more is always better - more books, for example, is not always better.

 The whole overview of the year is above, complete with context from prior years. Looking first at the yearly trends, look at the first section - activity measures. It's been downhill since 2019 (when I retired partway through the year). But I managed to turn around the downhill trend on some of these things - 2022 was more active by some measures than 2021. This was and is a hard fought battle. I didn't bike at all, I ran one whole mile, but I did get out there and walk! But not every day, by no means. I had more low activity days (days with less than 5,000 steps) than ever before, by a fairly wide margin.

The next little section shows the sad story of my weight - after holding it steady for the previous three years, I put on fifteen pounds and tied with my previous all time high. Let's just leave that there for now.

The next section contains some measures of wellness. I fell off the formal meditation bandwagon big time, this year. I believe I incorporate moments of mindfulness throughout my life in ways I didn't before I started meditating, but I don't sit for a practice much any more. In fact, many of the times I show I meditated, I put on a recorded meditation in the middle of the night in order to try to get back to sleep. In good news, migraine hours continue to decline! Two months with NO MIGRAINES at all! Woohoo! Sleep is relatively steady, and resting heart rate bounced around during the year, but the overall average didn't change that much.

The last section tracks various enrichment things. Again, these are not necessarily the most important things, but are things that are relatively easy to track and do show some softer aspects of my life. I was a reading machine this year, I wish I'd seen more movies, I hardly blogged at all, and likewise I failed to enjoy the delights of the city and city friends. But I traveled a lot, and I got a decent amount of sailing in. 

I've found the story of the ups and downs of the year are best captured in a graph of my daily steps throughout the year.

The dots are the daily step totals. The dark blue line is a running monthly average, and so shows the longer term trend hidden within the noise of daily variation. The lighter blue line is a running weekly average, so shows a shorter term trend than the monthly one.

So follow along the graphlines to read the story of my year. We start with an optimistic and motivated January, with several very busy days, followed by a steady decline in late winter and early spring as the bad weather and my bad knees dragged me down. There were some high points, but the trip to the Utah desert in March was disappointing as the weather kept us in. The weather got better during spring in Maryland, and I went out to California in April and I walked my brains out. Back home, I tried to get off the couch to train for my trip to the Nordic Isles in June and July, but pretty much I just hoped for the best and as a result I failed to enjoy the trip as much as I could have. I overused my knees and was often in pain.

I vowed to do better for my planned trip to Greece. We see a steady increase in average steps, facilitated by cortisone shots in my knees at the end of August, and steady physical therapy during September and October. Greece went really well, until I got covid. 

So the rest of the year was in the cellar, with constant struggles to get off the couch and move. The month of December has the lowest average steps of any month in years. It also has the most number of very low activity days. So I went on some walks, but consistency is lacking.

Steps are clearly a proxy for overall activity, but I think it's a pretty good substitute. I know that studies have shown that there is a clear relationship between few steps and all-cause mortality. From 4,000 steps a day to 8,000 steps a day, there is a clear relationship where more steps and better health are very tightly correlated. This is a correlation, and there is NOT a clear demonstration that moving from fewer steps to more steps results in better outcomes. It could be that folks in an unstoppable decline walk less. Is there such a thing as an unstoppable decline?

I don't want to end on a sour note, so let me say that right now, in the beginning of January, I feel pretty good, and very motivated to keep moving. I know deeply that moving more makes me feel better - there can be a virtuous spiral upward. So let's leave last year behind us, with maybe a few lessons learned, and go forward to the new year.

Knees Are SO MUCH Better!

Today I took what I want to be my "normal" morning walk - out the door, down into the park, back up through the neighborhood, about a mile and half, with some significantly steep but short hills down and up to the park. I've been doing this off and on for years, but recently I've fallen way off. The fact that it hurts before I even start, and will hurt more once I get going, has been one of many barriers. (Other barriers include my reactive barky dog, any weather less than optimal, having to get dressed, and sheer inertia.)

But this week, I've had to head out first thing, just as the sun comes up, to do a daily vacation backfill on a citizen science project, hyper-local network of national precipitation reporting, CoCoRahs.  It's on the "normal" route, so some days this week I've kept on going to complete the loop. Today was the first pain-free day in months! 

My knees have steadily deteriorated over the past several years. I tore my meniscus and had it repaired back in 2018. But now, it's a loop. The more the knees hurt, the less I move. I went to physical therapy a year ago, after they were really bad. Symptoms included not only pain, but also restricted mobility - I simply couldn't bend them all the way. The PT really helped with both pain and mobility. I was then motivated to keep moving by active vacations, in March and April. But perhaps from overuse, the knee pain grew enough worse that it grew increasingly easy to blow off the daily walk, despite my fantastic Iceland vacation coming up. After all, I had satisfied myself with what I could do in March and April, Iceland in July would be just as good, no?

Well, no. A couple of months off from active training eroded both the quality of my knees and also my aerobic fitness. I did a whole lot on the Iceland trip, but it was hard. I didn't do as much as I wanted. There were often options for different activities and I backed off the most active ones, hiking up volcanoes for example. I spent a fair amount of time in my nice little cabin, with my feet up and knees bent, popping tylenol and rubbing stinky and persistent but effective voltaren gel into both knees. They never once didn't hurt on the trip, and haven't really stopped hurting since.

When I got back from Iceland, I signed up for a trip to Greece. More about that another time, but everything I've read suggest all the places I'll want to go will involve stairs with no handrails. Time to fix these knees!

(As an aside, I am fully bought in to the mind-body approach to pain management. I can minimize suffering I have from pain, and even reduce and even eliminate some pain, through mindful meditation and somatic practices. It has really helped me avoid catastrophizing about issues, and my back pains and even migraines are less of an issue. These practises also help avert physical symptoms manifesting in response to external or internally generated stress, something I clearly used to do a lot. These practices include breathing, visualization, and self talk approaches that really help keep things on a more even keel. 

The way I think about these practices and my knees is this: my knees have mechanical issues that send messages to the brain. I can interpret these signals as pain, or call them sensations, and I can observe them from a distance with kind curiosity. All this helps, but there is value in also trying physical and mechanical things (exercise, strengthening, pain medications) to reduce the volume and urgency of the messages being sent to my brain.)

My previous sports-medicine doctor retired, and so I found an orthopedic surgeon to consult. My basic questions were, what could be done to help the knees short of replacing them, and was I damaging them them further as I used them? I wanted another prescription for PT because while I know many exercises for the knees, I find the skilled supervision helpful. 

The doctor said no, I couldn't damage the knees with movement, was happy to give a referral for PT, and also suggested cortisone shots in each knee, which he did right then and there. The actual shots were quite painful, but it only lasted for a few minutes until a local anesthetic kicked in. Then, over the past few days, the local anesthetic wore off and the steroid gradually kicked in. 

And hooray, they seem to be having an effect! 

The doctor said, and my independent reading confirms, that the only proven interventions to actually improve the knees (as opposed to alleviate pain) are exercise and weight loss. No supplements have been shown to have more than a placebo effect. So I can do whatever I want in exercise, if done correctly it will help, but the pain will likely be there. If I can bear it, I can do it, and if I keep doing it, I can keep doing it!  As to weight loss, that is a topic for another day.

I celebrated this improvement by putting in for a place on a short overnight sail on my schooner, about a month from now. I had held off, thinking about all the ladders on the ship. But now I'm ready to go for it!

Report Card: Wrap Up of 2021

I put together my report card for all of 2021. It really is a good exercise, because it keeps me honest. How I feel about how active I am, how much I do of something, is often very different from what the actual truth in the data is. For example, I feel like I'm being pretty active. Yet, by almost every measure, I've been less active almost every month of 2021 compared to my averages from 2020 and 2019. Huh. I've got to buckle down!

I've deliberately put a single, relatively small image of the report card here, because I'm looking at trends, not the specific numbers. This won't make a lot of sense on the phone - if you turn the phone to "landscape" you should probably at least be able to scroll through the whole image. In looking at the monthly changes, darker green is better. Migraines are in red, darker is worse. The three blue columns on the right show changes for 2021, 2020, and 2019, and it's the trends here that matter. Basically, darker blue is better for the measure.

The top group is activity, and as mentioned, everything is down from previous years. In 2021, May shows as the dark green month. That was both high gardening season, and getting ready for the first big sea voyage that went in early June. The good news is that December was up by most measures compared to the previous few months (which no doubt is why my subjective guess is that activity is up overall, the well known subjective "recentcy bias"). One thing that was much better this year than last year is strength. I started doing video training in February, and am doing it twice a week now very consistently. I love my trainer, and we have a nice social chat while I work harder for her than I would for myself. That is going to continue for the forseeable future. I also did a couple of months of physical therapy for my knees, and that is basically additional strength training for my legs not captured here. But I would definitely say that I feel stronger all over now than I did last year.

"Miles walked" is when I set out the door for a walk, and record it on my Garmin. The so-much-higher numbers last year made me go look at the specific data for last year, to see what I was doing. It appears that last year, I made a point of doing the "park loop" almost every day - a mile and a half out the door and through the park and back through the neighborhood. Most were first thing in the morning, after the first cup of coffee but before the second. It was just what I did. And then last winter in the bad weather and the dark, with bad knees and migraines, and an ailing dog that couldn't come with me, I just stopped doing that. I've been out walking more, but it's not a habit or a routine, at a standard time, but something I work in around other things. Hmm.... THIS is why looking at this stuff is valuable to me. What worked before? Why did it stop working? What can I do to get back to something that will work well for me now?

Moving on...

My weight is relatively stable across the year, and for the past three years. I am tracking my food more often than in previous years, and I'll have more to say about that in another post.

The really good news is that my migraines remain at a relatively low level, down from earlier this year and last year. (2019 migraine data is not reliable.) I'm meditating less than prior years - in formal meditations, at least. I think that reflects two things: I tend to go to formal meditations when I'm highly stressed or in pain, and those things are better. The other aspect is I do informal mindful check-ins, a few breaths, a body scan, a gut check, much more often. I don't capture those, of course. They are just part of how I go about my day, like scratching my nose or getting a drink of water. But I may try to work some longer formal sits into my days - I think it has benefits in several ways.

My entertainment aspects continue to cruise along nicely. I read about the same number of books this year as last, and blogged about as often. Sadly, I saw fewer movies, and I'd like to do better with that. None were in theaters, so almost all were alone. (I watched a lot of TV in 2021, but I haven't found an easy way to log that.)  As things loosened up last summer, I got into town a few times, I actually went on four trips away from home, and I got more sailing in, pretty consistently every couple of weeks starting in March right through November.

Going into this new year, I really want to be more active. I'm scheduled to go on another hiking retreat in Utah in March, and so that will be my kedge for the winter. I know it's gotten me out in the cold and the grey a few times I would have passed on otherwise. Freezing rain is supposed to come in the afternoon tomorrow, maybe I'll try the "after the first cup" timing tomorrow!

Intuitive Eating

 

It turns out Intuitive Eating is a Thing. It's even known as IE to its adherents. Forthwith, my exploration of IE with my thoughts.

I found IE (the Thing) from a podcast I follow, Ten Percent Happier. The interview was with Evelyn Tribole, one of the authors of Intuitive Eating, the book which is now in its fourth edition, and several other related books. And founder of a nutrition practice that trains Registered Dieticians and nutritionists to be Anti-Diet Dieticians. The focus of the podcast series is mindfulness, and in this episode Tribole gave her distinction between mindful eating and IE: mindful eating is a specific practice engaged when eating, while IE is a set of principles for living your life with a healthy relationship with food. One could engage in mindful eating while still having an unhealthy relationship with food. 

As is my wont, I plunged into this thing. I got the basic book from Audible where it was included in my membership and I listened to all 13+ hours in three days. I bought in hardcopy paperback the associated workbook, and joined a Facebook group that gave a quiz before they let you in, and an essay exam before allowing you to post. 

So quick warnings before going further:  This is the Anti-Diet, and will go against most of what we think we know about how to eat to accomplish our goals. And, it forbids having certain goals. And it denies what we think we know about how our bodies work. It denies there can be such a thing as a Food Addict. And, it comes across to this skeptical cynic a bit like a religion, because if it does not "work" it is because you, the failed practitioner, don't believe in the principles enough. This is one of the symptoms of a cult. 

So I am an IE skeptic. I am not all in. I think there is a lot of value here, and much of what they say about dealing with food is very healing. And a lot of it is very compatible with what I have come to believe about food and dieting overall. But the way it is written seems to be aimed at an audience that is in a much different place than I am. And some of it rings false with my own experience and evidence, not just beliefs.

So here are the ten principles that compose IE, the Thing:

1. Reject the Diet Mentality
2. Honor Your Hunger
3. Make Peace with Food
4. Challenge the Food Police
5. Feel Your Fullness
6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
7. Cope with Your Feelings Without Food
8. Respect Your Body
9. Exercise: Feel the Difference
10. Honor Your Health: Gentle Nutrition
    

The first is the big one. Reject the diet mentality, reject everything about diet culture, and here's a big point: do not try to lose weight. As long as you are trying to manage your food with the intention of losing weight, you will never make peace with food. A large part of the thinking is based on the psychological principle that restricting something leads to future rebound - the forbidden fruit tastes sweeter.

I am fully on board with the concepts of body positivity, health at every size (which is also a Thing, HAES), and the evilness of the enormous exploitative economic machine that is the weight loss industry. I fully acknowledge most attempts at long-term weight loss fail, and how much money is to be made in that fact. I've felt the effects of how denying something can lead to obsessing about it.

IE also fully recognizes that our society has a strong anti-fat bias, and that makes it difficult to give up the idea that being thinner is a good thing. And, in some cases, being fat causes economic losses and bad health care from medical professionals that can't see beyond the number on the scale. But, they counter, since almost no-one succeeds at long-term weight loss, and there is strong evidence that weight cycling is very bad for your health, there is no point to trying one diet after another, even if from time to time you are thinner. This condemns you to a life of never being happy with where you are and never being comfortable with food.

IE does not promise that if you fully embrace the process leading through all their principles and then practice them in your life, you will as if by magic end up losing weight after all. Instead, they say that you will simply lead a happier life. And be healthier, if only from stopping weight cycling. I sense a hidden footnote there, maybe it was in the earlier editions of their books, that many people do eventually end up at an equilibrium at a lower weight than where they started out. 

They state that during the earlier stages of their process, many people initially gain weight, as folks move through the first four principles in what they describe as a "re-feeding" process where all food becomes "emotionally equivalent". And they have that word "initially" in there, as if they are suggesting that as people internalize principles five through seven, where you learn how to stop eating, weight starts to come off. But they never say it. Principles eight and nine are to learn how to love your body and exercise only for the joy of it. And only at the end do they bring up the notion that while any and all foods should be emotionally equivalent, not all foods are nutritionally equivalent. 

Much of the practices are geared towards being mindful of and in your body. In my chronic pain practices we call this somatic tracking. In IE, it's called interoceptive awareness. (You've heard of proprioception? The sense of our body in space? This is the sense that goes kerflooey when vertigo strikes, and can cause sea sickness when screwed with. Well, interoception is internal sense of our body. They are real words, but spell checker doesn't acknowledge them.)  Feel and acknowledge and feed hunger, and rely on the wisdom of the body to determine what and how much to eat. As noted before in this blog, as if. This is the holy grail, and I believe it is the right way.

I think these books are geared towards people who are much more immersed in Diet Culture than I am. And I say this as a person who has for twelve years blogged on my diets! Perhaps at earlier times in my life I was much more of a true believer in The Way to lose weight. Perhaps I have demonized foods. But maybe because I have been both analytical and introspective about what I was doing, and because I've always considered myself a skeptical cynic, and because I have become much more tuned to my body through mindfulness and dealing with chronic pain, many of the exercises in their workbook don't work for me. But some do. (I wrote about my movements towards being more at peace with food just before I fell down this IE rabbit hole.)

My main caveat about IE:

I have engaged in weight cycling, but I also have not in 24 years gone back to my top weight. I am happier for not being that roly poly. And I'd like to be less fat in the future, I'm not willing to fully embrace this weight. So with that shred of doubt, I'm not a true believer and thus IE will not "work" for me.

Other bones to pick: 

•  I understand what they say about not demonizing foods, but foods will never be "emotionally equivalent" for me. There are memories and associations, and there are past somatic experiences, and there is knowledge about nutrition, and even often knowledge about the source and environmental footprint of how how food got to my plate. They do not embrace vegetarians and vegans, apparently believing most get there from a health rather than an ethical or environmentalist viewpoint, and any forbidding of food is anathema to them.
• For folks trying to make foods emotionally equivalent, to my eyes they push grain-based carbs rather hard. (Perhaps someone from a different diet history would think they are pushing fats too much.) 
• They discount fresh foods, and think fruit has no staying power (can't disagree) and think vegetables also have little staying power (I disagree) though they list fiber as distinct from vegetables and like fiber. 
• Their workbook has good exercises to do - vary your lunch, for example, while keeping other meals equivalent for a couple of days, and mark down experience with hunger and satisfaction. But the accompanying worksheets are prepopulated with examples that show their biases, which don't always correlate with my own experiences. For example, sandwich lunch versus salad - their "notes" example say salad didn't hold them the way the sandwich did, because the bread helped - but they assume a skinless chicken breast and fat free dressing on the salad, when I load my salads with things like olives and sausages and find the combination of fiber from the greens and fat and protein hold me much better than a bread heavy sandwich. (This is just one example, there are many). 
• We know the food industry works to increase palatability while delaying satiety in an effort to get us to eat more. This is not addressed. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to rely on my body to overcome the forces arrayed against it - except by eating real, whole, foods that haven't been subjected to industrial dark forces.
  

OK, enough for now. I'm continuing to figure things out, based primarily on my own insights leavened by reading. But I want to focus these first couple of months this year on getting strong more than what I weigh. That requires getting up off this couch!
 
 

Satisfied

I'll never be satisfied!

I've been embarked on an odyssey of mindful eating attempts. One of the main goals of this is to reach a point where I know not only "what" but "how much" I want to eat, I eat just that, and then I stop. Having just one exquisite but tiny little hand-crafted chocolate, for example, carefully selected from a free display, and then walking on, satisfied. Or, more prosaically, dishing out a small portion of one of my favorite dinners at home and then not even finishing that, because I'm satisfied. I truly do not want more.

As if.

As an experienced dieter, I have encountered various descriptions of this holy grail over the years. All of them are about how to think and act around food, and only go lightly on what to actually eat. No food lists or meal plans. Just paying attention to how much and what you eat.

I think there is a lot to this notion of listening to your body and acting on it. I picked up a book years ago, The Beck Diet Solution, with a Cognitive Based Therapy approach to eating, marketed as "learn to think like a thin person"! (This book was very influential in my starting this blog back in 2010, as one of the tenets was to have a diet buddy. There is still a link to the site over on the right.) There were a lot of useful exercises - self-experiments - to do involving learning how to recognize what we actually feel in our bodies, versus all the layers of thoughts and emotions we overlay on food. For example, she instructs you to skip a meal and check in on hunger at regular intervals, to remind yourself what hunger really feels like, while also discovering that hunger is not an emergency, you won't die, people live for weeks without eating anything. Also, to eat very slowly, setting down the fork between bites, and writing down how you feel before, during, and after. Make a daily plan in advance of all meals, and assess afterwards how you did. I found all of these exercises useful. Ultimately, though, the CBT approach relies on logical self-talk ("I would rather weigh less than eat this cupcake") in a way that requires self-discipline and self-control. After a while, it just gets tiring. It's a never-ending grind. Sigh.

Several years later, I discovered the Summer Tomato, a much more joyful approach to how to eat. Created by The Foodist, the basic approach was to only eat Real Food that tastes awesome (thus fresh tomatoes only in the summer), which requires cooking for yourself. Further, eat mindfully, exercise, and listen to your body. All good stuff, and reading her book several times, reading her blog, and listening to her podcast really did start to change my relationship to food. It wasn't a fight, because if it was a fight, you couldn't win. For me, it was still a struggle to lose or maintain my weight, but I definitely upgraded my food choices and learned to appreciate my food much more. She offered a week-long video course on mindful eating that I subscribed to. The main things I got out of that were to slow way down - fork down between bites - and to chew thoroughly before swallowing. And eliminate distractions while eating - tune in fully to the physical experience of eating and how it makes you feel. She promised the magic state of knowing exactly what and how much to eat I described up top as the result of fully embracing this approach. I never reached nirvana, but I started to make peace with where I was.

Somewhere along the way I started meditating, and I subscribed to the Ten Percent Happier app, where I am still a happy customer. They have a course on Mindful Eating, with Judson Brewer, who is an addiction specialist. I took that course, which goes deeper into the mindfulness approach than the Summer Tomato course. From there, I subscribed to Brewer's own pricey app, Eat Right Now. That had an intense month-long course on mindful eating. Some approaches I've learned from Brewer (that also work for things like anxiety and pain) are breaking the habit loop, RAIN, and disenchantment. Habit loops are something I knew about, but participating in the course helped me specifically note habits and try to modify them. RAIN (recognize, acknowledge, investigate, note) is a meditation technique where you turn in towards an unpleasant sensation (cravings, in the case of mindful eating), and explore what you are feeling with kind curiosity. This is called "surfing the urge", knowing that it won't last. Disenchantment comes from exploring your body after eating whatever, and really feeling in your body whether it feels good. I had some success with these things. I recognize a habit much more readily now, and much more of my eating is a conscious choice, though not always a wise decision. I was sometimes successful at surfing my urges, but often my urge seems to be driven from deep within me and doesn't dissipate after ten minutes or so, as the technique is geared towards. Instead, I might drive to the supermarket to buy ice cream, because I have an idée fixe that just won't go away. That's where disenchantment comes in - after eating, I can explore how my body really feels. As I started to use this technique, imagine my surprise that I can eat an awful lot of ice cream before my body starts to feel bad. But, there is a point where it does actually not feel very good. Hmm...

Then I stumbled on Corinne Crabtree, and her pricey on-line No BS weightloss course. She has taken bits and pieces of all of the approaches above and put it together in a way that really speaks to me. She is profane and down-to-earth. The basic approach is eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied (which is usually less than "full). We are fat because we overeat (eat when we are not hungry or have reached satisfied), and there are three reasons we overeat:

• Lack of body awareness
• Failure to feel our feelings
• Allowing our habit brain to take over

It's all about self-discovery, no shame, only data to explore. I've been through her video course, and some of her supplemental courses (eg, "Binge Better").  I listen to some of her podcasts, participate in her Facebook group, and almost daily use her planning and assessment worksheets which take about 10 minutes to do. There is definitely a cult of personality around Corinne, and I love that she reaches a population that is unlikely to follow my path of CBT and meditation and other approaches on the edge of woo-woo. She teaches habit loops, body awareness, and even how to feel your feelings, to a really wide audience that might not otherwise hear about these things. And I'm not being superior here: the way she talks about them are very useful for me as well.

For the past month, ever since I covered up the numbers on the scale for my daily weigh-in, I've been really tuning in to try to find "satisfied". I've jettisoned any goals around pounds, instead focusing on what and how much I'm eating - but in a loving and investigative way, not in a restrictive way. I've got "hungry" down pretty well, and I feel like I'm making progress towards finding satisfied. Late nights continue to be an issue for me, but it feels like progress towards being what I want to be, someone who eats what she wants, in the amounts she wants, and is at a healthy and attractive weight. 

My meditation app, Ten Percent Happier, is having a weeklong new challenge course that starts tomorrow, on intuitive eating. Short videos and a meditation for seven days. It's all part of the same approach and it's likely to help me be focused. I really liked something that came up in a teaser podcast for this course: "It's not about self-control, it's about self-care".  Yeah, baby! I've learned a lot this year about self love and self care, and I think I may be reaching a real tipping point here in my relationship to eating. I'll let you know how it goes.

Report Card

 I have continued to compile and look at statistics about me. It helps motivate me to look at the actual data of what I have done versus what I remember doing. I like to know if I am moving more or less, how I'm spending my time, what I'm doing to take care of myself. My memory is fallible, so actually entering the data into a spreadsheet is helpful. Turning it into a picture can be even more helpful. But then I need to look at the data and figure out what story is it telling me? What can I learn from what I've been doing in order to do better?

So herewith is part of my report card through July. On the individual months, more green is better. On the comparisons of years, the darker blue is better. I've had to play with the sizing, so the numbers may be hard to read. Luckily, the actual number matters less than the relative colors (darker is better, except red is bad). If you are on a phone, turn it sideways.

ACTIVITY

By any way you look at it, I'm less active this year than the two previous years. In fact, it's been a pretty steady decline each year. The one thing that is better this year than last year (so far) is the amount of working out (strength and flexibility) I'm doing. After the gyms closed last year, I lost focus. But now I'm working with my trainer twice a week, via video.

To focus on this year, I really worked to get in shape in May, to get ready for my big offshore voyage to Bermuda. (See Kedging It works!).  My mileage and steps were up significantly from the previous months. June has very few steps, at least partly because I had a whole week on a 100 foot long ship - not so much walking required! July steps reflect not only my daily efforts but also a couple of really long hikes in Maine. I'm aiming at averaging above 8,000 steps in August, at least until I get back aboard that big ship. The "miles walked" records deliberate walks, where I start up my GPS to track the distance. So I could have a fair number of steps if I get them just incidentally while going about my business during the day, but a very low number of miles. You can see by the high number of miles in May that I really went about deliberately getting those steps in. 

Mental Health

 I tend to meditate when I feel bad. In January, it was dealing with migraines. In May, it was dealing with the tsunami of anxiety I had about the upcoming voyage. I had been hopeful that my migraines were on the run, when I got socked in July after both vacations. In other news, I'm sleeping less, but that is actually a very normal pattern for the summer when it stays light so long. My resting heart rate increase probably reflects both the decrease in my aerobic conditioning as well as my high anxiety during vacations. (They make me anxious, but I want to do them. I've decided "thrilling" is my word - I'm scared, excited, and happy.)

Amusements

 I am a master of distraction. I am reading, listening, and watching rather than doing things pretty often. I had actually set myself a Goodreads target of fewer books this year than last, because I think I spent too much time curled up with a book rather than getting up and doing things. But I also set myself a target of more movies, and after the Oscars surge I let that slide. I'm now, when casting about for "what next" in my unstructured life going to my list of movies I want to watch. (I didn't keep track of movies in 2019.)

I added something new here: number of days away. I went back and reconstructed 2019 and 2020 travel - pretty easy, since there wasn't that much. I don't have a target, but I do want to be aware. It turns out that I slept at home in my own bed every single night from March 1, 2020 (after the Brooklyn Bash) until I boarded the ship in Baltimore in June 2021. Wow. But I'm making up for lost time now!

Did I mention I'm doing another Pride of Baltimore II voyage? At the end of August, from Boston to Baltimore. I'm hopeful my anxiety this time around will be much less, since I have such a good idea of what I'm getting into. And it's another kedge to keep me moving!

Losing Weight?

I've belonged to a paid weightloss group for just over a year now. Have I lost any weight? Well, maybe net 5-6 pounds down over the whole year (the Washington diet: don't actually reduce, just slow the rate of growth). And, a couple of pounds up from where I was in October. It sure beats gaining weight, but it doesn't appear on the surface to be a ringing endorsement for this weight-loss approach. Never-the-less, I think this is the right approach for me, and I have no plans to end my membership any time soon. Why?

First the background: This program is called "No BS" and it is the creation of a foul-mouthed southern woman named Corinne Crabtree. There is a free podcast, which is not only a marketing recruitment effort but also useful in and of itself, covering the basics of her approach. She has a free, short, on-line course. Once you complete that, you get on an invite list for the 2-3 times a year she opens to new members. Once you are in, there is a lengthy video course, emails, live zoom coaching sessions, pdf planner and worksheets to download (or buy to be shipped), a huge Facebook group with additional subgroups, spontaneous Facebook live events, and specialty short focus courses. Frankly, much more than I need.  

There are four basics to this: Sleep well, drink lots of water, make and assess afterwards a daily plan of what you will eat, and eat only when you are hungry and stop when you are full. Sounds so simple, yes? There are no other food rules.

I went through the video course last year when I joined, and I've been doing the daily worksheets more often than not for the past year. She updated the video course for this year, and it's much improved and I'm going through it slowly. The focus is of course on that last basic: eat only when you are hungry and stop when you are full. Any other eating is termed an "overeat". How do you quell overeating? Much of the course is on this - full of practical guidance and step-by-step approaches.

This program makes use of how we live and how our brains work. So maybe it isn't surprising that fundamentally, the key to eating mindfully has a lot in common with what I've learned about how to mindfully quell chronic pain. She says, in the video course, we are fat because we overeat, and there are three reasons we overeat: 

• Lack of body awareness
• Failure to feel our feelings
• Allowing our habit brain to take over

In dealing with chronic pain, these are also the three areas we work on. Much time is spent in mindfully focusing on our body and our feelings. And pain, like eating, can be a habit. Sometimes, it works for us, as a way of avoiding dealing with life. Sometimes we think, "I'm hungry", when we are tired or frightened. And sometimes, we think, "my leg hurts so very much" when we are scared or avoiding something. Body awareness - putting the lens of our attention to very specifically how "hunger" or "pain" is manifesting in our body, is part of the process. Journaling and meditating to bring our thoughts and feelings to consciousness is part of the process. And observing what we do - making unconscious actions conscious - helps us find habits that don't serve us and create habits that help us make the life we want. 

And, as part of both processes, we bring self-talk into our conscious mind, and change it deliberately. 

So with both processes I've done a great deal of work over the past year. I've had a hard time - and still am - with leg pains and migraines. But with the work I've done, I feel like I'm on the right track to leave them behind me. Just like I feel like I'm on the right approach to deal with my eating, in order to get to a better weight.

Self-Talk, Self-Care, Self-Love

I've been thinking a lot about my interior dialogue. Of course, I have a constant running rumination, but it's really shocking to actually tune in and hear the less-than-kind way I address myself. Word choice matters a lot, not just in the "big things" but also in the little things.

I've been a meditator for a while now, and I've always had a problem with the type of meditation known as "loving kindness". Frankly, it sounds like the woo-woo stuff I've always run far away from. The language and phrasing, invariably delivered in a special meditator's voice that comes across as pretentious to me, are sappy and sometimes downright silly. I doubt the power of positive thoughts to do much for oblivious recipients. And then, to apply that woo-woo stuff to myself...! I can't even. "You are perfect just as you are!"  P-U-L-E-A-S-E spare me! I am so far from perfect I can't even type the phrase without grimacing!

I've had a lot of problems with language around self-care, as well. "Self-indulgence, more like!" I think. I have no shortage of self-indulgences, from impulse shopping to ice cream or TV binges. I don't need more self-care, I need more self-discipline, to go out there and do more things that matter better. There is so far for me to go to live up to my own standards and judgement.

But through my various works at self-improvement, I've heard repeatedly that "self-love" is a necessary precursor for lasting change. At the same time, meditation has given me the ability to actually observe and overhear my inner dialogue, which is a manifestation of my relationship with myself. I definitely have an inner mean girl (and we don't need to delve here into why the voice sounds so much like my mother). So when my meditation app (Ten Percent Happier) said they were doing a New Year's challenge around self-love, I decided to give it a go.  

Well, it turns out that Dan Harris, the self-described "fidgety skeptic" behind the app, shares my distaste for the whole subject, and yet understands its importance for the same reasons I do. Leading up to the meditation challenge, he did several podcasts (also named "Ten Percent Happier") about what is really meant by the practice and approach of self-love, why it is necessary, and how to approach it so that it feels authentic and not forced bullshit. The challenge itself, short video clips followed by a daily meditation, was useful and I was faithful at participating. But it was really the conversations on the podcasts that helped me so much. 

So I don't have to use the loving-kindness vocabulary, and I don't have to jump all the way to pretending I'm perfect. I'm a work in progress, for sure. Self-love may be a bridge too far, but I can get to self-acceptance for sure. I'm a person, and deserve credit just for that. I don't have to look back at my accomplishments to justify my existence. Simply being here is all it takes to be worthy of love. In the language of one of the first meditations I learned, "as long as you are breathing know there is more right with you than not". 

So I've been cutting myself a lot more slack lately. I still have the urge to do more, be more, be better. But I think I'm more tuned to being kind when I don't live up to my own expectations. By listening to the way I talk to myself - turning inchoate feelings into actual words, often on the page, helps me get out useless loops of self-recriminations, accept what really is, and move on. And the "moving on" still involves effort and striving and falling short - but now it has just a little less recrimination.

UPDATE: Re-reading, I see I didn’t circle back to self-indulgence versus self-care. I got this through an analogy of how we treat others. For example, if an employee falls short, you don’t go all “it’s fine, it doesn’t matter, here’s an award so you don’t feel bad”. But you do encourage them, coach them, help them figure out how to do better next time, because it does matter and you want them to succeed. What are the barriers to success? Are there ways to provide assistance?  That same dialogue internally is caring for yourself, instead of a tongue-lashing, even if the tongue-lashing comes with ice cream.

2020 Report Card and Final Wrap-Up

 Herewith is my final report card for the year. After this, 2020 begone! I'm only looking forward!

 

First up: Activity. This past year was not great for my moving. Kim's friend Chris would be sad for me. I expended fewer calories overall, had fewer high activity days, fewer steps, more days very sedentary, and what I'm saddest about, many fewer days working out with weights. I got the bike out once, and tried running once. Only in "intentional miles" walking am I up slightly - and I think that is because I was more assiduous in tracking those miles. (In order to be logged, a "walk" needs to be at least 1 1/2 miles - no counting the incidental miles in the course of living my life.)

I have reasons and excuses, of course. The main one is I felt bad much of the time. Joint and muscle pain, headaches, upset stomach, all the things that are elusive and not subject to definitive diagnosis or fixing. But I'm extremely optimistic that I've now got a firm grasp on the mind-body approach to this, and this next year will be much better. 

 Next, my weight. I didn't achieve any big goals here, but I guess in the quarantine context I'm doing ok. I weigh slightly less than last year at this time, and (not shown) slightly more than I did in November, my lowest point of the year. Not coincidentally, I'm planning and tracking food much more often. I'm also really tuning into my hunger and satiation signals. I think I'm on the right track here, and again, I'm optimistic things will be even better next year.

 

On mind-body, it's a mixed picture. Not shown or tracked, I started serious therapy this year for the first time ever. First, in January, for twelve weeks I was in a structured (zoom) group, and following that, I started individual therapy over facetime. What I'm doing is geared towards somatic issues, specifically to address those with chronic pain of the types I have. On those things I do track, I'm meditating, less than last year (huh, if I didn't track it, I would have guessed different). My migraines are up for the year, but there were NONE in December and I think this is an effect of the emotional work I'm doing to re-train my brain. I am generally a champion sleeper, I certainly have plenty of time. My resting heart rate, which generally shows an overall fitness level, is slightly better than last year.

On the category I might term "self-actualization", if you are a regular reader, you know for sure I was a reading fool this year. I blogged more than last year, less than I would have liked. I started tracking "trips downtown" last year after I retired - generally trips last year were social, catching up with former work friends. Most of this year's trips were solitary dawn walks, reminding myself the city even exists. It feels like I sailed a lot this year, but seeing that it's less than last year, it must feel like more because it stands out so clearly in such a mass of otherwise undifferentiated days. Other accomplishments include a tap dancing class at the local community college (surprisingly effective over zoom) and several seminars and on-line short courses. I also got into sewing masks, and really engaged on the design and engineering creativity side while doing it.

I think I'm going to add movies watched to this list for next year - I would like to see a movie a week. This seems so very do-able, and I find setting a quantitative goal and reporting it here would be helpful. I want to do even more classes and short courses, tap class again, and sit down at my piano sometimes. I don't know I'll be tracking quantitatively here, though tracking can be part of the reward system that encourages me to keep going. I aspire to travel, but you know...

On the money front, I've spent some time working on the budget. My goals for this year were to get a handle on where the money goes, and specifically to reduce costs on food and clothes. Missions accomplished! This is the one area where the quarantine really helped. I cut food spending by 25%, mostly because I'm not eating out. Clothing was down by more than a third. (There was really no reason for me to buy any clothes at all this year, but I get bored and just want something new.) 

As another couple of money accomplishments, I did a final distribution to my family of the money from my mother's estate, and cut down on the number of different bank accounts I have. My mother's probate estate was something of a nightmare to deal with, and the IRS combined forces with the US Postal Service to screw some things up that created a great deal of angst for me. So when I close the estate's last bank account next week, I'm going to do a happy dance.

I tend to be analytic and want to be intentional about how I live my life. My current focus is trying to engineer my days to build good routines. When do I do what kind of exercise or other work? I've learned about habit formation so I'm thinking about this as another design challenge. What is my trigger to make me go work out? What might be the barriers? How can I make it easier to start? I know I hate going outside on days like today (grey and drizzling) so what can I do to get over the hurdle? Or is there something I can do indoors instead? Stay tuned!

Enough About the World. What About ME?

One way I've been coping with our crazy world is by turning ever more inward. Here is an update on some of the things I track, adding September and October since the last time I reported.

These measure how active I am. (More green is better.) Generally I'm trending upward, though I managed to do an insane amount of walking in July and am not likely to match that. I do have some very low days, and days when I feel like moving but manage to sit down until the urge passes. Everything except intentional miles walked is lower than last year, and I want to try to reverse that. I foolishly do not use my home gym very often, and I'm feeling the effects of not doing strength exercises. Also, I'm not biking or running but I'm leaving the rows in because I might.

Weight is one area where I'm doing better than last year, though not stellar. Not only have I avoided the Covid 15, but I'm slightly down, and tracking pretty often.

My mind and body are doing ok. A highlight is that migraine hours are down. Meditation is up, driven by the anxiety I felt over the state of the world. My sleep typically is least during the light months of the summer, and is slowly increasing as it is getting dark.

 

 My distraction and entertainment continue. I'm reading a lot of books, and listening to them too. I'm not much downtown, but have kept a steady set of sailing dates.

 

 Money is generally going ok. I still think I spend a ridiculous amount on food, but it's getting a bit better. At least I've stopped buying clothes that I have no place to wear. (Not shown: the money I spent on lap blankets and throws so I can huddle up and stay warm while wearing my jammies all day.)