Whisper

11 minutes ago, Rookie said:

In general I know a lot of people or have come across a lot of people who have never ridden a horse who think it is not exercise and say you just sit there and the horse does all the work

I know next to nothing about riding horses. Did it like twice when I was a little kid and all I remember is being really scared. You tell me your body works when you're riding horses, than I am confident that you're getting a workout when riding. 

As far as "not doing enough to lose weight"; lots of people are doing lots of stuff to lose weight and gaining it back over and over again. When I follow your challenges, you're trying to do smaller, sustainable stuff to help you get to a more healthy place. Good habits, gradually improving how you eat. Yeah, I can see some jackasses saying that you're not doing enough, but they're wrong. You're on a slow path that might just lead you to where you want to be, rather than a fast path right back to where you started. 

I'm sorry that the challenge you were looking forward to was delayed. 

4 hours ago, Rookie said:

And I am like I horseback ride... does that count?

A quick check to see if something counts as exercise: Does your body feel like you've exercised? 

I'm going to ring bells tonight, my arms are going to let me know that I used them, so it counts.

From Lily Nichols: 

Give yourself permission to eat when you’re hungry and permission to feel and respond to your emotions when you’re not. And, most of all, forgive yourself when you do overeat. We’re all human and guilt is both unproductive and detrimental.

Gonna use that as my thought for today. I definitely spent time last night eating my emotions. I know why and I don't need to waste time today beating myself up over it.

Been kind of a rough day.

The lady that M and I have been bringing to church the last two years is dying. Aggressive pancreatic cancer.

Her mind has been slipping more alarmingly the last several weeks. About a month ago we got with one of the pastors about our concerns and she got the parish nurse involved. Two weeks ago no one answered when we tried to get her for church. Tried to bring her a card Christmas Eve, her son answered the door, said she wasn't feeling well.

Last week M got a call saying she had a cold and wasn't going to church, when we got to church we found out about the cancer. Tried stopping by with a little gift bag that afternoon but got no answer, so left it on the door knob.

Didn't hear anything before today, so tried calling to see if we should get her. Got her husband, found out she was in the hospital.

Parish nurse visited her on Wednesday. She fell on Thursday and was taken to the hospital. The tumor has completely blocked off her bile duct, they put in a drain yesterday. It has nearly blocked off her stomach, a decision has not yet been made about a feeding tube. Plan is to send her home on hospice care tomorrow. Her skin was alarmingly yellow, but was apparently better than the orange it had been.

Her memory was really bad when we visited the hospital after church. She knew who we were, but it was like nothing new was being recorded. Knew she was in a hospital but not why. Happy to get to go home tomorrow, over and over again. Trouble remembering her dogs' names and if there were 3 or 4. We stayed with her while her husband went to get some lunch, she couldn't remember where he went. Didn't remember that her son had been there nearly constantly for days...

M is really, really upset about this. I don't know how I feel. Part of me just doesn't care. Part of me is releaved that a chore is coming to an end. Part of me is ashamed of those other parts. 

I started picking her up because she needed someone to, I kept doing it because it still needed doing. To me, she's just an old lady telling me the same stories as I drove her to church, and telling me how much she loved my violin playing and had always wanted to learn to play as I drove her home.

I don't dislike her, but I don't know that I ever actually liked her. Just something that needed doing that cost me next to nothing to do, so I did it.

Part of me feels like a damn cold basterd.

Doing this on my phone so I can attach the pictures without having to move them to my laptop, but doesn't look like I can spoiler on the phone... Sorry if this exploids your browser.

Had Friday off work. Started reading my IE book and worked on snow tree. Not sure if I'm finished with it or if I want to try adding fine twigs and detail to the lamp post.

In art class today, I added the front to the bridge, and some leaves on the rocks. Not sure if done or if I want to add more to it.

I found a really good frame for it, which was on a really good sale. Normally $135, got it for $35. Once painting is finished and dry I'll get it mounted.

I also started a small joke painting

Got busy at work, ended up getting really hungry and started feeling shaky. My doc had me start a new medication on Monday that has hypoglycemia as a possible side effect; I'm wondering if I might have hit that. Made and ate a peanut butter sandwich. Feeling better, debating having another.

22 minutes ago, Lateral Planet said:

here's a pic of happy Frankie from the last time we went orienteering

Such a cute puppy.

I've been reading some articles over on Healthline.com and the following really jumped out at me:

Instead of approaching weight loss from a dieting mindset, make it your primary goal to become a happier, healthier and fitter person.

Focus on nourishing your body instead of depriving it, and let weight loss follow as a natural side effect.

52 minutes ago, Rookie said:

Hey Whisper! Let me know how you like the book. Intuitive Eating is definitely something that peaks my interest. 

 

Great job on the painting so far. 

Book just arrived at work today! (I was expecting it to arrive at home tomorrow)

 Looking forward to digging into it.

This morning, after first breakfast (5 am, coffee with fat and protein powder) and 2nd breakfast (8am, whole milk plain greek yogurt with frozen berries) I recognized that I was starting to feel ravenously hungry with over an hour and a half until Elevenses. Rather than try and ignore it, or give in to the temptation to find some donuts, I went ahead and ate one of the two slices of leftover pizza I had brought for Elevenses, and felt much better for it. I have some Powerseed bread and peanut butter with me at work in case I didn't bring enough food with me today. 

20 minutes ago, RedPandaOne said:

New Year, Old Challenge! I'm copying and pasting my last challenge until things become a habit for me since they aren't, yet. 

I like that. Keep at it till they stick!

12 minutes ago, Novena said:

(I always have frozen veggies, but three boi packs my lunch and he doesn't season them or anything.

I have found it worth the little extra money to get the seasoned Green Giant frozen veggie bags. I get a variety of them at the store and grab one at random to throw in with my lunch and since it is seasoned, I'll actually eat it and not feel punished.

15 minutes ago, Novena said:

This takes five minutes and feels wonderful. And of course, being me, I haven't done it in ages.

I can so relate to this! Quick? Easy? Feels good? Yeah, lets stop doing that. 

It looks like you have a good format to begin your rise. Good luck!

The last few days have been really enlightening from a body recognition and paying attention to my food perspective.

I've been doing this "Hunger Awareness Exercise" with each meal. Paying attention to how my body feels before eating and through the meal. Paying attention to my food in a way I've never really done before.

I never before realized how much hunger feels like nausea in my body. Is that normal? Do most people feel like that? Throw in some mouth watering and needing to eat is a lot like needing to throw up. Not exactly the same, but really damn close for me. I've been aiming to eat when hungry, but not ravinouse, and stop eating when I feel less hungry, but not yet full, in an attempt not to overshoot that mark.

I've also been avoiding distraction, not eating in front of the tv or computer, or book, but simply being with the food. Looking at eat. Tasting it. Even when I've tried to log food, I've never really paid attention to eat while eating. It has been a good experience thus far, and I look forward to continuing it.

On 12/31/2019 at 4:10 AM, Siferiax said:

Hope that gives you more resources to use and enjoy  I found the content pretty helpful myself.

Thank you; I'll have to check it out.

I'm Whisper,

I'm trying to figure out the whole "be a functional and healthy adult" thing. I like being here because there are a bunch of other people trying to figure out the same shit. I work, I play the violin and hand bells for my church, I paint.

Something nerdy about me, I learned to love reading on Star Wars books, and I do not know that I will ever be able to forgive Disney for jettisoning the Extended Universe and making the abominations they're calling sequels.

Spent a long time trying to decide on a gif. Looks like I'm going with this one:

8 minutes ago, fleaball said:

Where on the internet can I order a goddamn spine??

Amazon?

9 minutes ago, fleaball said:

. But even though I can’t stand him I would feel bad leaving him alone when the other guys’ families will be there.

This will  probably sound odd, but  that is something I really like about you. You don't like him, you don't feel the need to pretend to us that you do. But you're still a good person and you care about others, regardless of liking them.

1 hour ago, Defining said:

Just wanted to pop in and mention that there's an on-going IE support thread in the 'diet & nutrition' section, if you ever want to chat with other folks doing the same!

Thanks. I've skimmed over there a little bit. Been looking through some of the resources in the first post. 

6 hours ago, Zaethe said:

Now I just learned that he's making gluten free devil's food cake (from a box) for me for my birthday, because I'm allergic to wheat.  I'm going to ignore that it contains milk and soy, which I'm also allergic to, because he's made a huge effort that's very unlike him.  This makes me inordinately happy.

That sounds like big progress for your dad! Sucks that he wouldn't listen before, but at least now he is making some effort to acknowledge the truth of your health needs.

Also:

Made Good progress on my bridge painting. Hopefully I can finish it up this week.

I'm not sure that the leaves covering the path turned out right...

Looks like you have a good plan. Looking forward to seeing you work towards the next chapter of your life!

1 hour ago, fleaball said:

how do I make it so that I wake up tomorrow in a parallel universe where my life doesn’t suck?

Neo seemed to think taking a red pill would help, but frankly that seems to be a choice of dystopias. Perhaps you could find a green pill?

Not my best challenge ever. Not my worst. Weight stayed fairly flat, wich for over Christmas is probably the best I could realistically hope for. 

Didn't really care for having all the guilds piled into a single area. It felt like there was just too much noise. Couldn't be heard, had trouble following others. Often any post older than two hours was pushed off the first page. I like the smaller group when Rebels has their own area better.

I'm trying something different with my next challenge. Giving up on food logging for the time being and I'm going to try Intuitive Eating.

Been on the forums here fairly consistently for a year now. There have been ups, there have been downs. There have been gains and losses. I'm tired and I'm frustrated because it feels like I'm a year down the road, but no closer to my goals.

Dec 29, 2018 I weighed 361.4 pounds. Today I'm at 357 pounds. I couple times this year I managed to get down into the 320s, but never could keep it there or keep up the momentum. Logging food seems to help some, but it gets so tiresome, and half the time I'm just guessing.  High fat / low carb seems to help some, but I keep ending up with crazy food cravings and binge eating in the dead of night.

I'm in a cycle of trying really hard to be "good" getting some short term results, having things get crazy in life, falling back and going back up in weight. I'm tired of it. So, I'm going to try and do something different. I've heard people here talk about Intuitive Eating, contrasting it with dieting by saying something to the effect of "dieting you lose weight first and then gain it back, IE you might gain weight first, but then you keep it off for good." This has been a scary idea for me because I don't feel like I can afford  to got any heavier than I already am, but I need to break the cycle I've been in and right now don't know any other way to do it.

At @Tanktimus the Encourager suggestion, I've order Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works. When that get's here I'll start reading it and following the advice therein. I've also been reading other articles online on Intuitive and Mindful Eating. It is going to take some real changes with my relationship with food, but I am hoping that it will prove successful.

I'm not sure what I'm going to define my goals as for this challenge yet. I know sleep is there other key I need to stick with, so that'll be a part of it, but for now, I'm ready to try a different path and see if I can find what has eluded me thus far.

1 hour ago, fleaball said:

Took FK to the vet (he gained 1.3 pounds since we switched his food!)

Are they happy with his weight gain?

I really hope the 3D printed splints work out.