[KB Girl]

You did look a bit peaky today, a little whiter in your face than usual- hope you don’t mind me saying! 
 

You think lower calories is affecting your mood? I suppose being uncomfortable at your current weight is also not great for your mood, but that’s an annoying one to balance.. one thing you could do is check that you’re not losing weight really fast, that would be a clear alarm bell to eat more. 
 

i assume you’re taking vitamin d? 

[Waanie]

On 11/9/2022 at 8:27 PM, Mad Hatter said:

This is just so unfair isn't it?

Life is unfair, and being an autistic woman in tech means I play life in hard-mode. On the other hand, I think everyone has problems to some degree?

 

21 hours ago, KB Girl said:

You did look a bit peaky today, a little whiter in your face than usual- hope you don’t mind me saying! 
 

You think lower calories is affecting your mood? I suppose being uncomfortable at your current weight is also not great for your mood, but that’s an annoying one to balance.. one thing you could do is check that you’re not losing weight really fast, that would be a clear alarm bell to eat more. 
 

i assume you’re taking vitamin d? 

I was already feeling much better than the day before! But anyway, I hope it is a short-term thing. I am taking vitamin D, although I forget taking it regularly. My weight seems to be more or less constant, which is what I expect. There's heavy fluctuations right now, but that's not strange this time a month. I have no idea what is affecting my mood, but I am already feeling better than yesterday. Might be PMS (intrusive thoughts are quite common that time a month), might be anything else. Who knows...

 

Yesterday's workout was a bit meh, I felt quite weak (again). I still have my chin-up, but only 1, and 40kg squat felt unreasonably heavy. Instead of finishing my sets I showed someone the basics of bouldering on the tiny wall, which was more fun. I was thinking that I should use it a bit more regularly to load my shoulders under different angles. Hopefully my neck will then not stiffen up so much when hanging in the rings/on the bar.

 

Tracking wise, it's some days on, some days off. I eat more on working days (about 300-500kcal),  but I also have much more general movement on working days. We'll see what my weight does after the menstrual woosh.

[Mad Hatter]

5 minutes ago, Waanie said:

Life is unfair, and being an autistic woman in tech means I play life in hard-mode. On the other hand, I think everyone has problems to some degree?

True. Funnily enough that combo used to describe my pole teacher.  Up until she also had the rage quit moment like I did.

 

7 minutes ago, Waanie said:

Instead of finishing my sets I showed someone the basics of bouldering on the tiny wall, which was more fun.

That sounds fun! Glad you're feeling better.

[Waanie]

On 11/10/2022 at 9:23 PM, Mad Hatter said:

True. Funnily enough that combo used to describe my pole teacher.  Up until she also had the rage quit moment like I did.

I can see myself rage-quitting, but also feeling bad about not having a structure in my day in the form of work.

 

My mood is going up and down like a rollercoaster, and my weight is dropping surprisingly fast. I have no idea if that's due to my period or due to actually losing weight, hopefully it's a combination of both (we're talking about 1.5kg in a week here). I'm hungry fairly often, and my mental energy levels typically increase after I've eaten something, so a part of he lethargy is coming from not eating enough.

 

On a more positive note, KB class was fun today . I should do it more regularly, but the time is most often inconvenient . I'm not in a place in life where I can change my routines too drastically, so I guess I'll mostly stay with body control and strength training. In the afternoon we started pruning the trees, but I'm just collapsing from that mentally somehow. I don't know why exactly, maybe it's the perfectionism? I'm now generally feeling down and I haven't touched my clarinet in too long and have not practiced at all, and everything just keeps getting dirtier and such. Blugh.

[Mad Hatter]

On 11/13/2022 at 2:43 PM, Waanie said:

I can see myself rage-quitting, but also feeling bad about not having a structure in my day in the form of work.

I was quite worried about that since my daily stand ups was pretty the only fixed point in my life. Turns out I don't need them. But you and I are very, very different in that regard.  

 

I'm sorry you're struggling, sounds like maybe it really is the reduced cals. Could be a good idea to keep the diet short. 

 

Glad you had fun in class!

[KB Girl]

On 11/13/2022 at 1:43 PM, Waanie said:

In the afternoon we started pruning the trees, but I'm just collapsing from that mentally somehow. I don't know why exactly, maybe it's the perfectionism?

That's what will often do it for me, either that or working on one thing makes the list of all the other things that need to be done taunt me and call me names. 

Sorry you're having a rough time.. maybe part of it really is the drastic drop in temperature? or you know, just.. life. Hopefully we'll both feel better soon ❤️ 

[Waanie]

On 11/14/2022 at 8:33 PM, Mad Hatter said:

I was quite worried about that since my daily stand ups was pretty the only fixed point in my life. Turns out I don't need them. But you and I are very, very different in that regard.  

We really are different, and I also like the automatic social interactions at work .

 

On 11/14/2022 at 8:33 PM, Mad Hatter said:

I'm sorry you're struggling, sounds like maybe it really is the reduced cals. Could be a good idea to keep the diet short. 

 

Glad you had fun in class!

Thanks, I'm starting to think of finding middle ground!

 

20 hours ago, KB Girl said:

That's what will often do it for me, either that or working on one thing makes the list of all the other things that need to be done taunt me and call me names. 

Yes, that does it for me as well. This week is crazy as well, but I managed to plan my todo-list such that every day has only a few tasks on it.

 

20 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Sorry you're having a rough time.. maybe part of it really is the drastic drop in temperature? or you know, just.. life. Hopefully we'll both feel better soon ❤️ 

Either that, or could it be the darkness in the evening? It's dark now after work, which is very sad.

 

Looking back at the past few weeks, I can see that my PMS was about a week longer than usual, probably due to my covid vaccin last month. My PMS started around the normal time, but my period was very late. Oh well. I could rant about why this kind of side-effects are acceptable for women, but it probably wouldn't help.

 

My weight is back to slightly lower than when I started this challenge, and the huge swings in water weight seem to be over again as well. Some days are better for not eating too many snacks than others, and tracking has somehow become hard for me. I now more or less know where my limits lie though, which is good.

[Mad Hatter]

2 hours ago, Waanie said:

We really are different, and I also like the automatic social interactions at work .

I like that part too, but honestly I'm quite happy focusing on my friends instead.   

 

2 hours ago, Waanie said:

Yes, that does it for me as well. This week is crazy as well, but I managed to plan my todo-list such that every day has only a few tasks on it.

I use this strategy too otherwise I stick my head in the sand pretending it doesn't exist.   

[KB Girl]

Tracking is not something most people can keep up indefinitely.. but if you do it occasionally you can get kinda good at guesstimating, which works well enough  

[Waanie]

On 11/15/2022 at 11:39 PM, Mad Hatter said:

I like that part too, but honestly I'm quite happy focusing on my friends instead.   

Most of my friends work all day as well . But yeah, I get what you mean. Now I often just veg out in the evening or in the weekend, it would be nice to do some more stuff with friends.

 

On 11/15/2022 at 11:39 PM, Mad Hatter said:

I use this strategy too otherwise I stick my head in the sand pretending it doesn't exist.   

I actually did all the things on this week's todo list .

 

On 11/16/2022 at 10:55 PM, KB Girl said:

Tracking is not something most people can keep up indefinitely.. but if you do it occasionally you can get kinda good at guesstimating, which works well enough  

Fair enough. Usually I start tracking for a week or two around this time a year to slightly adjust my diet, so I guess I'm just falling in that pattern again . To be fair, I like my general diet, I just have to be a little careful with the calories.

[Waanie]

It seems like my weight is actually slowly going down . It's slow going (about half a pound per week), but that was entirely to be expected with just cutting out hot chocolate and sugary snacks from my diet. The most important thing is that this seems sustainable and seems to work, so I'm happy about that.

 

This week's workouts:

Wednesday's strength training was fun, and I really like the group of people (and the trainer of course ). Squats went fine, much better than last week. We did quite a lot of corework, but all at an easier intensity than we'd have done at body control.

Thursday's body control was nice as well. We started with "above the rings", which meant I did shoulder stance on parallettes, assisted dips in the rings and top position hold on the parallel bars. Then we did some animal-flow stuff that I had to severely scale back to be on my level, but it was fine over all.

Saturday's body control I strongly disliked. We started with catching/throwing tennis balls, at which I'm terrible and that I don't enjoy at all. Then we did half an hour of "handstands", which included exactly 5x10s of handstands in total. Meh. I get that I'm nowhere strong enough for handstand push-ups, so my level is regular inclined push ups (most did pike push ups), and that crow stance is also hand-balancing, but it was very disappointing. I did some climbing on the tiny bouldering wall after the training to load my shoulders under some different angles, and noticed that my grip strength has become horrible as well . I could still use my feet properly, so that's a win at least .

[NightWatcher13]

On 11/19/2022 at 10:40 AM, Waanie said:

It seems like my weight is actually slowly going down . It's slow going (about half a pound per week)

That is a great rate, and very sustainable  1-2 lbs/week is like the absolute fastest rate that is remotely healthy, so half a pound per week is great progress - and if it's consistent it's all movement in the direction you were wanting to go, so please don't feel like this is bad at all

[Waanie]

On 11/27/2022 at 11:41 PM, NightWatcher13 said:

That is a great rate, and very sustainable  1-2 lbs/week is like the absolute fastest rate that is remotely healthy, so half a pound per week is great progress - and if it's consistent it's all movement in the direction you were wanting to go, so please don't feel like this is bad at all

Thanks! I think it's a great rate for me, since I'm on the edge of being overweight, and therefore don't need to lose weight quickly.

[Waanie]

Challenge report

 

All in all, I'm not too unhappy about this challenge. I got more insight into my standard diet, and lost about 1kg in total. I severely reduced my intake of sugary foods by just not buying them and not drinking  hot chocolate at work, and that's basically the only change I've made to my diet. The weight fluctuations around my period are huge, and it's good to know that these fluctuations can totally overshadow my weight loss when looking at the scale. In the last week my cat got sick and I had to go to the vet often, which is very stressful for me. I noticed that then it is much harder to eat and exercise as I should, but that I recover relatively quickly from that as well.

 

At the moment I'm technically not overweight anymore, but losing a few extra kgs would be nice. Not sure how well I'll manage that over the Christmas period, but at least now I know that I can do it .

[KB Girl]

Great job on keeping this weight loss thing small and simple and doable. And sounds like you've given yourself grace for the last week  

Will you be joining the next one?

[Waanie]

3 minutes ago, KB Girl said:

Great job on keeping this weight loss thing small and simple and doable. And sounds like you've given yourself grace for the last week  

Will you be joining the next one?

Typing it as we speak! I want to do a themed one, so it's a little bit more work than usual 😅.