Tsune of RisenPhoenix

[Kishi]

7 minutes ago, RisenPhoenix said:

 

Knee is not terrible.  She said the swelling has gone down, that she has only a minor limp, and it takes a full 12 hour shift of running around on her feet for it to get cranky.  No official diagnosis and planning until she meets the specialist later this month, though.  I'm still hoping that it's a reeeeeeally minor tear.

 

I hope the same for her myself.  Hate to hear about her getting hurt.

 

Anyway, .02 for your dietary foibles: as someone who struggles to keep to a cut in social situations, I used to find that eating anything off plan was a trigger for me to eat more. Because, I reasoned, what was the point? I wouldn't hit the target I'd aimed for, and I worked hard, and it was probably a wash anyway. Which it never was - I wasn't good at restraining myself or being disciplined, and it was very much a situation of one step forward, one step back.

 

One thing I finally realized was that even though I might have blown my macros, the way in which I blew them was a choice. I could blow them with cake and ice cream and all that stuff... or, I could blow them with good food, with meat and veggies and good fats and starches.

 

Now that's not to say that calories don't count, as you're finding. But also as you seem to be finding, the makeup of those calories is incredibly important, and can offset or mitigate the harm to your goals that going off track would otherwise do.

 

So, you know. FWIW.

 

Anyway, I'mma hassle you now too.

[RisenPhoenix]

1 hour ago, Kishi said:

Anyway, .02 for your dietary foibles: as someone who struggles to keep to a cut in social situations, I used to find that eating anything off plan was a trigger for me to eat more. Because, I reasoned, what was the point? I wouldn't hit the target I'd aimed for, and I worked hard, and it was probably a wash anyway. Which it never was - I wasn't good at restraining myself or being disciplined, and it was very much a situation of one step forward, one step back.

 

One thing I finally realized was that even though I might have blown my macros, the way in which I blew them was a choice. I could blow them with cake and ice cream and all that stuff... or, I could blow them with good food, with meat and veggies and good fats and starches.

 

Now that's not to say that calories don't count, as you're finding. But also as you seem to be finding, the makeup of those calories is incredibly important, and can offset or mitigate the harm to your goals that going off track would otherwise do.

 

So, you know. FWIW.

 

Anyway, I'mma hassle you now too.

 

Oh, most definitely.  I usually eat the least-bad option when I go out, and honestly I'm pretty good about the getting back on the wagon after the fact.  The social thing is relatively new to me over all, though - been going and seeing people much more regularly these days than I did when I started.  A lot also comes back to I don't want to hardline it again and say no to every social engagement like I did when I started losing weight back in the day, because, well, it's fun to go do things with people sometimes.  Most of the time when I'm going to parties or being social I'll try to do a semi-IF thing, load up on tasty stuff before hand, and try not to munch away.  But ultimately I am a grazer and my biggest weakness is the "little handful here and there" that pops up.  Its relatively easy to combat that at home, if I have no snacks or only healthy snacks (which honestly, most of the time I have).  

 

Really, once I get back to a more comfortable weight/BF% for me (somewhere around 205 pounds and ~16-18% BF), I'm totally okay with my general eating habits.  If I wobble and do the one step forward, one step back thing, that's totally okay in my book.  I'm just trying to get back to where I was before a ball of stress and holidays pounded me flat, while also trying to enjoy the fact that I am not said puddle of stress any more.

 

Choices, yes, but there's a lot more moderation for me this time around than in the past. And add in the fact that my food behavior and history means I need to be really, really conscious of my activity levels and how I fuel them so I don't significantly undereat like I did before.

 

Bodies are weird and dumb, is what I mean. 

[Mistr]

Yay for Company having a good shift as an ER nurse!

 

Where did I miss the news about her getting injured?

 

I hear you about food. Bodies certainly are weird.

[RisenPhoenix]

6 minutes ago, Mistr said:

Where did I miss the news about her getting injured?

 

About a week or so back.  She was teaching some sparring moves, legs got weak, and from what I gathered threw a kick and torqued the knee juuuuuust past where it wanted to be and went down.

 

Same ACL/knee that she severed 5 years ago.  Same one that actually had brought her here.  Same knee she has been babying ever since.  And one of the first times she had gotten back on the mat in earnest since finishing school in December. :/

 

It *has* been better, though, so I'm still hoping it's a minor surgery, instead of something massive with a crazy recovery time.

[Kishi]

I will hope the same.

[RisenPhoenix]

Twenty-two.

 

That's roughly how many inches of snow fell on us yesterday.  Ended up shoveling twice.  Once around 6 or 7PM for an hour (where it was mabye 16-18 inches), because we thought the storm had slowed down enough, and then again at 9:30PM when we realized that ANOTHER 6-7 inches fell on us in two hours.  Something like an hour and a half of being outside, moving snow and cars, with a side order of "helping a neighbor push out their car from the snowbank."

 

Food was pretty solid, considering.  I did eat about 3000 calories, but that's because at the end of the night my downstairs neighbor handed me a fresh baked brownie after I had treated myself.  How do you say not to that?  You don't.  That's the answer.  Body didn't seem to mind my indulgences, based on a few markers of mine.  So that's good.  Still not great for weight loss-sake, but not terrible.

 

I was thinking of going to aikido tonight (since classes were cancelled yesterday with the Blizzard and all), but my left knee is doing something weird.  I think I have some mild tendentious going on between the top of my calf and the back of my knee.  A little swollen, a little grumpy, mild, mild limp.  So I think tonight ice, massage, and compression are called for.  Hopefully it'll be better tomorrow or the day after, since Friday night I have social plans.  And Saturday.  And Sunday.... My social battery is going to be shot next week, I suspect. 

 

So that's the plan for the next few days.  Let's see what derails it all.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

2 hours ago, RisenPhoenix said:

Food was pretty solid, considering.  I did eat about 3000 calories, but that's because at the end of the night my downstairs neighbor handed me a fresh baked brownie after I had treated myself.  How do you say not to that?  You don't.  That's the answer.  Body didn't seem to mind my indulgences, based on a few markers of mine.  So that's good.  Still not great for weight loss-sake, but not terrible

You probably underestimated the snow shoveling calorie burn

 

2 hours ago, RisenPhoenix said:

I was thinking of going to aikido tonight (since classes were cancelled yesterday with the Blizzard and all), but my left knee is doing something weird.  I think I have some mild tendentious going on between the top of my calf and the back of my knee.  A little swollen, a little grumpy, mild, mild limp.  So I think tonight ice, massage, and compression are called for. 

I had something similar, but with the front of the knee with some tendons. Some yoga helped me.

[RisenPhoenix]

4 minutes ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

You probably underestimated the snow shoveling calorie burn

 

Eh, MFP estimates that I burned about 800 calories with those two shoveling sessions.  I feel like that's a bit on the high side, even with the time spent moving about and the thermoregulation involved.  I didn't feel totally stressed out from moving about, because the snow was pretty light.

 

Eh.  Whatever.  Brownie was amazing anyway.

[RisenPhoenix]

Yesterday I was doing so well with food, and then semi-blew it at night.  Even so, it wasn't terrible.  I ended around 2500-2600 calories, because I decided that my starving-ness was okay with some pineapple and cottage cheese for dessert.  And that's after I had forced myself to drink a liter of water.  Small tricks to keep myself from totally over-doing it.  Otherwise the only bad thing was a pair of granola bars and a Hershey nugget that I shoved in my face when work didn't look like it was slowing down at all for me to eat anything.  More calories than I should have maybe indulged in, but ah well.

 

Today however, food is terrible, because I succumbed to pizza.  Really delicious, specialty pizza.  I also hadn't eaten anything except a banana all morning and spent the morning in the lab running around, so willpower took the pizza over the mediocre lunch I had brought.  Mediocre lunch will now be tomorrow's fare.  But otherwise, I haven't eaten any other junk today.  I am going to try and add a new "snack" section to my MFP tabs, though.  I think it would be good to have a separate section for what foods work provides that I'm indulging in a single space, rather than across a lunch, or breakfast, or snack category.  Have "Breakfasts", "Work Snacks," "Lunch," "Dinner," and "Home Snacks" to space things out and see numbers a bit more clearly.  Might help.  Dunno.

 

Workout-wise, my initial plan today was to go to two hours of aikido, but my knee is being seriously wonky.  Massive knot or bakers cyst or who knows what, but my left leg/knee is seriously displeased when I bend my leg past a 90 degree angle.  So seiza would be a nightmare, and I'm not sure how constantly falling and getting up would feel, either.  I think I'm going to do one more night of recovery, and then from there I'll do class tomorrow night.  Which I have to do anyway, because I told friends I'd have dinner with them tomorrow night after aikido. >.> <.<

 

Bodies are dumb and shouldn't fall apart, is how I generally feel, at the moment.  Make me a cyborg already.

[RisenPhoenix]

Best way to wrap up a week?

 

Amazingly solid data and planned two hours of aikido.

 

And then devouring all the Indian food with friends post-class.

 

Hell yea.

[RisenPhoenix]

Does it classify as “Eating like an asshole” if my calorie intake was predominantly done via beer?

 

Probably. Had a real fun time last night though doing a Birthday/St. Patrick’s day pub crawl with cousins/family/friends/freimaily. It was mostly empty bars because we went to dives places around where they all went to college, so all the college students went into Boston downtown to drink and left us areas with seats and tables. And usually ability to hear one another. Usually. I didn’t get home until after 2am, and partook in the bar-closing ritual of “Where is the closest place that sells food I need it now,” which in this case was a scrappy pizza place that had mediocre pizza that tasted fantastic when drunkenly ravenous. 

 

Today my my headache is questioning the wisdom of my actions yesterday. Ah well. 

 

At at least I got a little over an hour on the mats in, so that was good. Today I’m mostly going to eat not like an asshole. Maybe a single cheat item, but plans are pretty damn healthy. Thank the gods for my batch cooking habit, though. Several pre cooked chicken breasts and veggies easily seen and prepped. Probably should go really light this week, and I’m going to need a day or so off from people come this coming weekend. But it should all be pretty good. 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

3 hours ago, RisenPhoenix said:

Does it classify as “Eating like an asshole” if my calorie intake was predominantly done via beer?

Nope. That's clearly drinking.

[Sloth the Enduring]

The Germans say “six beers make a meal.”


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[RisenPhoenix]

20 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Nope. That's clearly drinking.

 

Well it turned out okay... because I ended up eating like an asshole yesterday when my neighbor gave me all the brownies. 

 

20 hours ago, Sloth the Enduring said:

The Germans say “six beers make a meal.”

 

Oh, so I only had a meal and a half the other day!  Great!

 

 

Food yesterday was going so, so well.  And then I got free brownies and it all went downhill.  With that floodgate opened I made a few more not-great life choices.  Not a lot of volume, but the junk was, well, junk and calorie dense.  Though the rest of my food items were pretty solid.

 

I ended up making a Jamacian Jerk chickpea stew on the fly the other day.  I had a marinade that I bought and used on chicken a couple weeks ago, so I used that marinade, a can of chickpeas, black beans, and diced tomatoes (all drained and washed), plus most of an onion, and some garlic and ginger.  Sauteed the onions until soft and brown, added the beans, a couple tablespoons of the marinade, and then like a cup of water.  Let the whole thing simmer for a few hours before I called it done.  Tasted good within 5 minutes, better after a few hours of simmering, and honestly pretty damn tasty today when I had it for lunch.

 

Plus side of eating a whole bunch yesterday is my body really didn't care for food all this morning.  So I'm not totally hating my hungover choices.  

 

Knee is feeling better, but I still need to be decently safe about it.  Probably won't do Stairs this week again (last week I skipped both because of my knee and the blizzard remnants were going to make the workout a more run-based one, rather than a Stairs workout).  Aikido plans are hour today and two tomorrow, two Thursday, and one Friday and probably one Saturday.  Or I'll do 2 Saturday.  Either way, Friday I'm cleaning one dojo with Harvard people, and Saturday I'm helping clean our dojo.  Sunday might require a bunch of rest on my part, both on the social front and the "do what I want" front.  But we shall see.  Lots to do in the mean time.

[RisenPhoenix]

As noted, my body really didn't want a whole bunch of food yesterday.  When all was said and done, I had about 1900 calories of food stuffs, and ate no calories for my aikido hour back because, meh, didn't care for food.  Today I'm a bit hungrier, but that's totally fine in my book.

 

Yesterday's aikido class was pretty entertaining.  We have a newer student who's a nidan from another aikido style (and not one of the 'typical' ones, either).  He's figuring out all the moves we do, his aikido is really great, and now and again he busts out with some moves from his last style.  After working with him a bit yesterday, I definitely decided to steal two things from him.  One of the techniques was based on our "rowing" exercise - pretty much scoot behind an attacker, attach your hands to their shoulders, and row with your hips.  The momentum ends up (hopefully) pulling them to the ground if you time it right.  Normally we just flow around the attack, plop our hands down, and scoot.  The variant I want to hijack involves a bit more of a batting-away the attack, a small atemi/strike to the sternum, and what felt like draping the arm/elbow over the shoulder in the closest hand (which makes uke closer to your body, so easier to move).  It felt nice, so I want to play with it.

 

The second technique was a kneeling breath exercise, which was a bit more, er, vibrant, than we normally do.  That one essentially is bowling someone over, by breaking their balanced towards their knee and pushing their shoulder to the same side.  If I held two swords, it would essentially be two parallel strikes, one at the hip level, and one at the shoulder level, but from opposite sides to create an 'X' type motion.  Kind og two yokomen strikes to shoulder and hip.  Hardish fall, but effective.  Definitely want to keep playing with it.

 

Also I'm officially going to the USAF Aikido Summer Camp at the end of July.  Week long camp, 7-8 hours a day of aikido.  It'll be awesome.  I also have a concert I'm going to the Friday before the camp.  One of Company's favorite bands, and I kind of surprised her by buying the tickets on a whim.  But the band last toured in 2011, they aren't going anywhere near Houston for her to see them, and I have enough wiggle room that the tickets and even a short-visit flight seemed worth it.  The reaction was definitely worth it.

 

Once again, I enjoy having a stable income.  Still amazed I can do this shit sometimes.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

That sounds awesome. So glad you get to do both the concert and the camp.

[RisenPhoenix]

I swear. I even deign to think everything is going fine, and the universe goes “Hold my beer.”

 

-Kinda sorta maybe minorly dislocated my thumb last night practicing. Good class, lots of fun, and then ended with some play. Then realized my thumb was really annoying. Iced and compressed and rested as best as I could. 

-Company got the results back. Nearly fully severed ACL and surgery in the near future, probably May. 

-My dishwasher leaked all over my kitchen floor. Spent an hour trying to fix it. Thought I succeeded. Failed and respilled water all over my kitchen. 

 

At least I managed to get a snazzy haircut today.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

29 minutes ago, RisenPhoenix said:

-Kinda sorta maybe minorly dislocated my thumb last night practicing. Good class, lots of fun, and then ended with some play. Then realized my thumb was really annoying. Iced and compressed and rested as best as I could. 

-Company got the results back. Nearly fully severed ACL and surgery in the near future, probably May. 

-My dishwasher leaked all over my kitchen floor. Spent an hour trying to fix it. Thought I succeeded. Failed and respilled water all over my kitchen. 

That stinks x3

30 minutes ago, RisenPhoenix said:

At least I managed to get a snazzy haircut today.

Pics or it didn't happen  

(But maybe get someone else to take the pic if it's your selfie thumb that's busted)

[Teirin]

Sorry man :-(  All crap news.  *hugs* to Company too.

[RisenPhoenix]

Small plus sides. 

 

Thumb is better tonight than it was yesterday. Boss is fine with me taking a week to go attend to Company after the surgery. And my kitchen sink still works, so besides some mopping I’ll still be able to clean. 

 

But holy hell my life is never dull, is it?

[Sloth the Enduring]

Dang. That’s a rough day. You seem to have a better attitude about it all than I would.


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[RisenPhoenix]

14 hours ago, Sloth the Enduring said:

Dang. That’s a rough day. You seem to have a better attitude about it all than I would.

 

Eh.  I do admit that last night I had a bunch more food than i should have.  A few mini cadbury eggs, a spoonful of some ice cream, and a 'cheat' yogurt.  Probably about 2700 calories total.

 

Today, I had planned on behaving.  Note the past tense.  Work provided a BBQ lunch from a REALLY good place.  I took a plate of meat, and a large helping of collard greens, and devoured it.  Also my team has been trying to do a team ice cream trip, and despite the (light) snow all four of us decided that we wanted ice cream today.  So I'll get ice cream tonight.  Dinner will be a bunch of corned beef and cabbage and *insert other veggie here* because corned beef.

 

My thumb still isn't great, so no practice.  I should ice the sucker some more, and remember to take some aleve at the end of the day.  It is better than yesterday, but still not super.  Thankfully I can use my intern for most of the "hard" work (which is repetitive thumb usage, so it really does suck for me).

 

One day I'll be less broke, I swear.  If I'm not good tomorrow or Saturday, maybe I'll go to the gym and cardio a bit on a bike or use machines sans grip.

[Kishi]

On ‎3‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 12:14 PM, RisenPhoenix said:

Dinner will be a bunch of corned beef and cabbage and *insert other veggie here* because corned beef.

 

Has someone who has had your corned beef, I fully vouch for this decision.

 

Also, way to be smart about how your body is doing. And frankly, I don't buy the idea that machines are no good anymore. For where you are with how you're doing, they might just be the ticket.

[RisenPhoenix]

Goddammit.

 

Despite trying to catch all the water from my dishwasher, enough fell between the cracks that it caused water damage to the first floor’s ceiling. Said first floor resident bitched to Landlord (and she has a nasty habit of dealing with him), which made him text me at 10 at night, which meant I had to move up my plan to tell him about the issues. I WAS planning on doing it tomorrow morning anyway, but now it looks like I only told him because damage happened. 

 

Like, I understand his annoyance. But also he got mad I didn’t tell him about a clogged drain that the first response would be “Buy Draino” anyway. 

 

So so now I get to clean my apartment, then deal with my landlord tomorrow night as I get chewed out for not commenting immediately on issues that he wouldn’t act quickly on anyway even if I had. 

 

Fucking fuck. 

 

So much for my plans on relaxing this weekend. 

[RisenPhoenix]

Okay. So. Good news. Sink is now unclogged and dishwasher is functional again. Landlord was annoyed, but less diskish than expected. I also practiced this morning  both at my dojo, and a few hours at Harvard. It was good. 

 

The bad bad is my roommate’s sister vomited from drinking too much. All over my brand new couch. And it now reeks. 

 

A month old and the couch now smells like a frat house. My nice, fancy, adult couch. 

 

When my shit goes crazy it goes all the fucking way.