Bookish Badger Learns to Love the Grind

[Bookish Badger]

UPDATE:

Stamina: 9

Health: 0

Magicka: 32

Total: 41

 

Still have been eating poorly due to holidays/company/etc. I'd planned on getting back on the wagon Sunday, but ended up not because leftovers. Also, my husband made a wonderful lasagna on Monday so it had to be eaten. This weekend is the big company holiday party so giving myself a pass until that's done.

 

Also have not been back to the gym in a couple weeks. I'm still having trouble getting used to my schedule change because when I'm through with work, I want to go home dammit. I have an offsite seminar on Monday that is nowhere near my gym, so starting Tuesday I'm going to commit to going to the gym after work every day in December excluding shark week and see if I can make afternoon workouts work. If not, I'll try mornings again.

 

Magicka points are up because I got a lot of reading in over the 4-day weekend, and I've been doing my morning written affirmations daily. Not sure if they're helping, but I've committed to sticking with it for at least six months, then I'll assess.

 

Now that it's December, I can start using my most recent Magicka perk, my new Hobonichi planner! I've been doing a sort of modified bullet journal (BuJo) that I think will fit great with the Hobonichi format - or as I like to think of it, a HoBuJo (or BuJoNichi).  The two-month-per-page vertical spread is perfect for habit tracking.

[Bookish Badger]

Well, that didn't go so well. Yeah, no gym workouts at all. Healthy eating habits? Out the window. But with all of the festivities and such over with, I've no more excuses to avoid doing what I know I need to do.

 

I started out thinking I'd recap the past year, but that feels like it'd just be a list of failures. Instead, here are some thoughts for the beginning of 2017:

 

I've been reading Mindset by Carol Dweck. It is one of those books that is so widely quoted and referenced that I felt like I'd already read it, but it was good to read the original.

 

My biggest takeaway: talent, as in "I wish I could do that; he/she is so talented!" is a myth, an excuse, and possibly an insult to the talented person being complimented, because it implies that the person's accomplishments are the result of some inborn gift and not the result of hours upon hours of hard work. 

 

New favorite word: Yet. "I can't run - yet." "I can't draw - yet." "I'm no good at math - yet." Whatever the statement of my shortcomings, adding the little "yet" will remind me that the situation isn't fixed and I have the power to change it if I want.

 

Another book I just finished is How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. This may seem like an odd companion to Mindset, but if anyone embodies the growth mindset that Dweck promotes, it has to be Adams. This is a "secret of my success" book that covers a lot of different topics, diet and exercise among them. 

 

Now, Adams himself says that people probably shouldn't take health advice from a cartoonist who can't draw. But one thing really stuck with me as I look (again) at ways to improve the way my husband and I eat: "You should be able to look at pretty much any vegetable and know at least five delicious ways of preparing it, two of which need almost no effort." That seems like a pretty good goal. So expanding my repertoire with my go-to veggies, as well as experimenting with new ones, will be a goal for 2017.

 

Another theme for 2017: Declutter. I think that most people could come to my house and wonder what I mean - as long as they don't open a closet or cabinet. Behind the closed doors it is a different story. I think I probably use 10% of most of my storage because the junk that has accumulated over time is crowding everything else out. I swear I can feel the psychic weight of all that stuff dragging at me. A major purge is long overdue, and it starts tomorrow.

 

I have the day off, and I'm tackling the hall closet. This is the catch-all closet that has everything from kitchen towels to bed linens to flower vases to who-knows-what-else. Everything is coming out, only stuff that we actually want and use is going back in, and the rest is going away. Each weekend, I'll clear out a new spot - maybe a closet, maybe just a single drawer. But something will get emptied, sorted, and organized. I foresee many trips to the Goodwill donation center in the coming months.

 

Thanks for reading, and here's to a Rebellious New Year to us all!

[Dagger]

2 hours ago, Bookish Badger said:

I started out thinking I'd recap the past year, but that feels like it'd just be a list of failures.

Can I make a suggestion? Don't recap the year, but do make a list of your successes. Anything from learning how to push yourself better, how to care for yourself better, how to figure out your mindset, etc.

 

Take a moment to celebrate what went right in 2016. I find it highly unlikely you didn't have any. Especially since I've been following your challenges for a while yet and I know you have a lot of successes there.

 

2 hours ago, Bookish Badger said:

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Sounds like a book I might enjoy. *wanders over to Amazon for a moment*

 

2 hours ago, Bookish Badger said:

Another theme for 2017: Declutter. I think that most people could come to my house and wonder what I mean - as long as they don't open a closet or cabinet. Behind the closed doors it is a different story. I think I probably use 10% of most of my storage because the junk that has accumulated over time is crowding everything else out. I swear I can feel the psychic weight of all that stuff dragging at me.

I love this goal. Not only because I have to do that too. Although I'm doing it because I'm downsizing to the amount of stuff I can carry in a backpack (more or less, I can store some things with parents).

 

2 hours ago, Bookish Badger said:

here's to a Rebellious New Year to us all!

Yay! Rebellious Year to us all!

[deathbyshiny]

17 hours ago, Bookish Badger said:

Now, Adams himself says that people probably shouldn't take health advice from a cartoonist who can't draw. But one thing really stuck with me as I look (again) at ways to improve the way my husband and I eat: "You should be able to look at pretty much any vegetable and know at least five delicious ways of preparing it, two of which need almost no effort." That seems like a pretty good goal. So expanding my repertoire with my go-to veggies, as well as experimenting with new ones, will be a goal for 2017.

 

I feel like this is sagely advice. I need to try this!

[Dagger]

How is it going? Is your battle log working for you?

 

How can we/I help you succeed?

[Bookish Badger]

Quick update:

 

I got back in the gym yesterday & did the StrongLifts A workout. I'm sore today but it's a nice "ooh, that got my muscles' attention" sore and not a "why did I think that was a good idea?" sore.

 

More encouraging is that my back didn't flip out like the last time I did weighted squats. I only did 3 sets because that felt like enough after a long break from the weights, but I'm cautiously optimistic that I've got my form problems fixed. Friday: four sets!

 

I'll do a longer post later when I have a little more time.

 

 

[Dagger]

Glad to hear it went well.

[Laghail]

Following!

[Bookish Badger]

5 hours ago, Laghail said:

Following!

Welcome!

[FatboySuave]

I love the idea of learning how to be more versatile with vegetables. I often look at the veggies in my crisper and feel uninspired by my limited repertoire and then they go bad and then I throw them out. If you find any good recipes or sites with ideas, please share! 

[Bookish Badger]

16 hours ago, EternalJourno said:

If you find any good recipes or sites with ideas, please share! 

I will!

[Bookish Badger]

Quick declutter update: On Monday, I cleaned out the hall closet! When I was done, I could actually see the shelves! The garbage bin was overstuffed, and my car's trunk was filled with still-useable goods to donate to Goodwill, but I still couldn't tell you all of what was taking up all the space.

 

I cleared out some things that we'd been given but never used (i.e., 2 full sets of placemats, cloth napkins and napkin rings; vases that came with flower arrangements that are way too big to use for casual garden cuttings, etc.) and worn-out towels and bed linens. But mostly it was just meaningless junk.

 

The good news is, I now won't have to buy new lightbulbs for about 5 years. I kept finding 4-packs with a single bulb used. Apparently, I didn't realize we had some, bought more, used one, then chucked the rest of the box into the closet where they were covered by another layer of accumulated stuff...repeat for the past 10+ years.

 

One thing I do need to get is a box or basket for medicines. Neither of the bathrooms have medicine cabinets, so occasional-use meds like cold remedies tend to end up here. (I found so many boxes of expired Dayquil!) A basket of some sort will corral the remaining items and keep them from playing hide-and-seek with the lightbulbs and tea towels.

 

This weekend: the main bathroom vanity!

[Severine]

Hello Badger!! So happy to have caught up a bit with your efforts. Sorry you didn't get everything done in 2016 that you wanted, but I distinctly remember being impressed by some of your challenges and so I hope you gave yourself mental credit for the victories you had.

 

I suppose it's not much of a coincidence, given that cleaning out clutter is a common year-end task, but nevertheless I find it happily serendipitous that we're both on a cleaning-out-the-house mission at the same time. I follow a similar strategy: tackle one closet or overstuffed dresser at a time. I've made so many trips to the local Goodwill they probably know my licence plate by now. Isn't it amazing (or terrifying) how much we can have socked away in the backs of closets or in the bottom drawers of bureaus without even realizing it? And somehow once a bit of junk is there for a certain amount of time, it seems to attain an odd form of tenure in my brain. Like, I just stop questioning why that box of old CD jewel cases is at the bottom of the coat closet. That's just where that thing goes. Ridiculous!

 

No more! I'm revelling in the freedom of clearing out stuff I don't need. For me it's tied up with a lot of feelings - growing up in a poor family, you never threw anything away because you might need it sometime later, and if you did you wouldn't have the money to just buy it. So it feels oddly risky, and even indulgent, to get rid of stuff just because I'm not using it. But I'm confronting those feelings, and also creating more logical standards for whether or not something is useful. And I'm placing a greater value than ever before on the freedom that comes with an uncluttered life.

[Bookish Badger]

13 hours ago, Severine said:

Isn't it amazing (or terrifying) how much we can have socked away in the backs of closets or in the bottom drawers of bureaus without even realizing it?

Amen!

This week, I cleared out my bathroom vanity. You know those little round cotton makeup-remover pads? Let's just say I won't need to buy more anytime soon. Or Q-tips. After tossing the junk and sorting the rest, I added a few things to my list of organization supplies:

• 2 drawer organizers (like for cutlery or office supplies)
• a small bin to contain all those Q-tips and pads
• a much larger divided bin to contain the ridiculously varied fem-hy supplies that my monthly cycles now require.

I'd planned to go to Target this weekend, but that plan was canceled because freezing rain.

 

In other news, I found out sort of sideways (I was rejected as a blood donor) that I'm anemic - like really anemic. I'd been feeling off for months, but it was so vague I didn't know how to discuss it with my doctor. In hindsight it seems obvious that I was experiencing anemia symptoms.

 

My doctor put me on iron supplements, which I started taking on 12/22. It seems to be helping a little. I'm not exactly a ball of energy yet, but I'm waking up before my alarm clock again, not sleeping so late on weekends, and generally seem to be more "motivated" to do stuff. It will probably be a while before my hemoglobin levels are back where they should be but the supplements seem to be working!

 

Now, where's the steak & creamed spinach??

[Laghail]

26 minutes ago, Bookish Badger said:

My doctor put me on iron supplements, which I started taking on 12/22. It seems to be helping a little. I'm not exactly a ball of energy yet, but I'm waking up before my alarm clock again, not sleeping so late on weekends, and generally seem to be more "motivated" to do stuff. It will probably be a while before my hemoglobin levels are back where they should be but the supplements seem to be working!

 

Now, where's the steak & creamed spinach??

I'm sorry friend, that's so great you got a diagnosis though. Maybe a feta and spinach stuffed hanger steak? Mushroom and peppercorn cream sauce over the top, because we're not savages.

[Severine]

I'm not normally one to put in a plug for Pinterest, but I got a lot of good ideas for creative organization/storage solutions on there!

[Bookish Badger]

After last week's successful attack on my bathroom, I've gotten the green light to go after Mr. Bear's bathroom. We use different bathrooms due to schedule and space issues, and let's just say we have differing tolerances to disorder.

 

His depression hasn't helped. How important can a cluttered counter be to someone who has seriously considered ending his own life? On the other hand, starting the day in such a disordered place can't help his depression. Well, I can't do anything about his brain chemistry but this? I've got this!

 

In other news, I have a big motivation to get my eating back to LCHF. It's been upgraded from "yeah, I know I need to do that" to "I MUST do it NOW."

 

My blood pressure has been too high for a while, and I think I mentioned that my doc put me on medication. There seemed to be some improvement for a little while, but then it started climbing again.

 

I checked it yesterday: 160/107. Yikes. That's higher than it was pre-medication. Maybe I put the arm cuff on wrong? Checked it again a few hours later. 160/100. At this rate, I'm going to stroke out walking around the block!

 

Aside from exercise, of which I am not doing enough yet, a LCHF diet is the only thing I can think of that will quickly drop my blood pressure without additional meds. So this is my "farewell to carbs" for the time being. I started at dinner last night. Go me!

[Dagger]

Woah! Take care of yourself. I have no idea what 160/100 means, but if you say it is high then it is.

 

And when depressed it is impossible to clear a cluttered counter, but a clean and organized do help. Well, it did for me. So I hope it helps Mr. Bear too and it isn't stressful for you.

 

Take care of yourself, my friend. We want you around. <3

[Severine]

3 hours ago, Bookish Badger said:

How important can a cluttered counter be to someone who has seriously considered ending his own life? On the other hand, starting the day in such a disordered place can't help his depression. Well, I can't do anything about his brain chemistry but this? I've got this!

 

Yeah, the friend I was talking about in my thread had a similar issue. He moved into a new apartment last summer, but never got the boxes unpacked. So he was living in a chaotic mess of boxes, and it was lowering his mood and making him feel like a failure, but he never felt good enough to attack it. I talked to him about it a few times, tried to pep talk him into doing it in the name of improving his mood. He agreed it was a good idea but it never happened. I repeatedly offered help and he kept declining. After two months of that I just showed up at his house one Saturday morning and imperiously announced that we were unpacking things. He was kind of...politely annoyed and resigned about it? But I had steeled myself for that and decided it was worth it to just stop the cycle of badness. Long story short: I organized the hell out of that place. When we finished, it looked great - like an actual finished apartment - and he felt way better about being at home from then on. Sucky experience but it reinforced my belief that our environments have a huge impact on our mood whether we realize it or not.

 

Mr. Bear is lucky to have such a kindly and capable Badger.

 

I'm sorry to hear about the blood pressure. Sometimes genetics are cruel. Sounds like the LCHF diet has helped in the past so here's hoping it does so again!

[Dagger]

5 minutes ago, Severine said:

my belief that our environments have a huge impact on our mood whether we realize it or not.

Truth.

 

The environment was the reason I had to sell my previous apartment and move even without a good plan in place because that place was toxic to me. A slow drip drop of toxic. (Not a person's fault by the way, purely the apartment, maybe because it was an apartment or its location or whatever. A few different reasons, but mainly the apartment.)

[fleaball]

34 minutes ago, Dagger said:

Woah! Take care of yourself. I have no idea what 160/100 means, but if you say it is high then it is.

I forget which number means which thing, but normal blood pressure is supposed to be around 120/80 I believe.

[Bookish Badger]

44 minutes ago, fleaball said:

normal blood pressure is supposed to be around 120/80 I believe

Yeah, 120/70-80 is considered normal, 130/80+ is getting into the hypertension range. I got down to the high-120s/mid-90s just after my blood pressure meds were doubled (the top number, systolic, dropped significantly but the bottom number, dystolic, didn't budge - worrisome since that's considered the more critical of the measures). 160/100 is downright scary given that I was working from home in my pjs and about as low-stress as I could be and still be conscious.

 

So I've got work to do.

[Owlet]

That's so nice of you to organise Mr Bear's bathroom  Glad to hear the organising goals are going well. Sorry to hear about the health issues though. Sounds like you're keeping a sharp eye on them at least and taking action. Hope you see some improvements soon.

[Bookish Badger]

Thanks for the support everyone. I'm concerned but not freaking out. It's just one more wake up call, like Life can't quite help poking me:

 

 

Now, a new veggie recipe as promised:

 

Kung Pao Cauliflower (and Chicken!)

The original recipe can be found here: http://www.pickledplum.com/kung-pao-cauliflower/

 

Below is my adaptation according to what I had in my pantry:

 

Meat & Veg

Olive Oil

1 head cauliflower, cut into bite-sized florets         

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized cubes

          Add the chicken, with another splash of oil if needed. 

1 teaspoon (5ml) of red pepper flakes or to taste

1 teaspoon (5ml) of granulated garlic

2 handfuls redskin spanish peanuts

 

Heat a large skillet over med-high heat and add cauliflower with a dash of olive oil. Cook for several minutes, tossing often. You want to get some really dark color in spots. I added some water during this part, to give the florets a chance to start cooking through without burning. When the florets start to soften, add the chicken, red pepper flakes, garlic, and peanuts. Sauté until the chicken is nearly done. While all this is cooking, mix up:

 

Sauce

4 T (15ml) of soy sauce

2 T (15ml) of water

1 1/2 (12ml?) of apple cider vinegar

2 T Mirin

1 T sambal oelek (or other hot chili sauce)

1 t (5ml) cornstarch

Simmer a little longer to thicken and reduce sauce.

 

Sprinkle with:

Garnish

3 scallions, minced

 

And serve! 

 

We both found this very tasty so it will enter the regular rotation. It comes together pretty quickly if you don't try to prep everything up front: dice the chicken while the cauliflower cooks, then mix the sauce while the chicken cooks, then chop the green onions while everything cooks. 

 

[Owlet]

Fun story, over here the cornstarch packaging looks almost identical to the custard powder. Guess which one I used last time I made stir fry....