Episode 77: 60 days

60 days ago, AM challenged me to a walking challenge.  Today, I have completed the challenge.  Because I messed up my knee (something about bursitis), my doctor recommended that I walk for 20 minutes a day, as just light exercise to get the knee going and work out some of the muscles.  AM said that if we created a routine, a daily regime of walking, I could buy myself one small fitness item that will help me continue to get healthier.  That item is a FitBit.

I have been trying to track my steps, exercise and diet on my phone, but I am beginning to find that it drains my battery pretty quickly and it's not really all that constant. I have to have the phone with me, it can't be on the charger, if I want to track the steps that I take.  While they have apps for it, there are no really good apps to track your sleep patterns and sleep quality.  The Fitbit promises to do all that.  It's a gadgety thing that goes in a wristband that you keep on you at all times and tracks everything you do and then syncs wirelessly to your phone or computer or whatever to help you track.  And I get this neat little gadget probably tomorrow (if I can find money in my budget for it) because I kept a goal and I stuck to it for 60 days.

They say that it takes 27 times of doing something in the same way to create a habit.  60 seems excessive, but it works for me. I feel wrong if I don't do my walking every night now.  In the last 60 days, I have walked.  Sometimes I walked during the morning, sometimes I walked in the evenings. Sometimes, after coming home from gaming or a movie or just hanging out with our friends, we have walked past midnight.  The track that we take is simply around our apartment complex, two laps, which equals roughly between 2/5 and 1/2 a mile.  I didn't always walk in the apartment complex. Sometimes on rainy days I would walk the same approximate distance twice around the grocery store from the produce section to the bakery section and back.  Most of my random zombie walks down to the market and back counted for my walk for the day. Some days I exceeded my half mile by a lot, and sometimes I barely made it, either because of injury or illness (when you can't breathe for coughing, it may not be the best time to walk).  But I made it.

I finished my challenge tonight with one last walk past the mostly brightly lit windows around the apartment complex.  Inside, families and friends were going about their business, most of them watching television, or gathered in some other fashion. Some were using computers, and some were cooking a late meal.  Over the last 60 days, I have gotten to know some of these people. The gentleman in the balcony on the opposite building always smiles and tells us to have a nice evening.  A young mother yesterday told us that she felt it was a strange day when she didn't get a chance to say hello to us.  Though we don't know names, only faces and location, our walks have helped us get to know our neighbors and our neighborhood better.

My next challenge is not to end the walks, but to continue them and add some more to them. Another lap perhaps, or some weight training that my doctor recommends for weight loss.  Perhaps I will do both, but I know that I can create and maintain a habit for 60 days, and I plan on making more plans to become even healthier.

What do you plan to do with the next 60 days?

Love and Lollipops,

ToryLynn

Episode 71: Challenge accepted

This is me. I weigh, as of this picture of me, standing on a scale, 307.0 pounds. Not the heaviest that I have been, but not the lightest by a long shot. 20 years ago, I weighed half of what I do now. That half, around 150 is my goal. It's not ideal or optimal and it would make my doctor's eyebrows crease on that way that they do to know that I don't plan on my "official" body weight being within "normal BMI limitations for a so called 'healthy' person."  I don't care if I'm not stick thin or absolutely gorgeous. I care that I am healthy enough to chase around my eventual children.  So, here I am, at a friend's house accepting a month long weight loss challenge.  The winner gets a pot of gold and a leprechaun to dance around on it.  Ok, well, maybe I'm wrong about the leprechaun, but there is treasure at the end of this adventure, for she or he who loses the highest percentage of their body mass. I'm gonna try.

I post this picture for a few reasons. One, to motivate me to get my ass moving, and off the couch.  I look awful and I look fat and I have bingo curtains. I mean really!! BINGO CURTAINS!! I cannot believe I let myself get this big.  I post this picture because I am ashamed of the way that I look. I am ashamed of who and what I have become over the years through unhealthy eating, lack of movement and a great deal of depression that I haven't been willing or able to accept over the years.

Another reason I post this picture is because it is real. I am not hiding behind a gorgeous, thin avatar. I am not trying to be someone I am not and I am not trying to fool myself any longer. In my head, I am a much much thinner person, but I have to honest with myself about who I am and what I look like if I want to start to lose the weight. I can't fool myself and eat another doughnut or have another soda thinking "oh, I can work this off later."  It's not going to happen. I have to put down the carbs and be realistic about how I got here in the first place and how I am going to get myself out of it.  I packed on this weight, this fat, this body and it took me years to do it. It is going to take me a long time to get it off, but putting it on took a lot of work too.

The last reason I post this picture now is that it will be different in a month's time.  When I weigh in again in 31 days, at the end of the challenge, my friend, TechnoDude (henceforth referred to as TD) will take another picture of me and I will post that one too and I will be able to see the awesomeness shining through under a much thinner layer of fat.  I don't expect it all to go away in a month, but a month is a good start for starting new habits.

Look out world, here I come!

Love and Lollipops,

ToryLynn

Episode 59: Cloud Bank

There are clouds over Stockton today.  As the criminologist would say, they are heavy, black... but maybe not so pendulous.  But I can see the edges of the clouds, and I can see the blue sky just beyond that rim of moisture.  The edges of the clouds are white, and if I look up with an anchoring point, like a telephone pole or a tree, I can see this cloud bank that hangs heavily over my life beginning to shift and move away.

That is how I feel lately, like I am under a huge black cloud that threatens rain. A storm cloud seems to be hanging over me constantly.  I feel like this cloud bank has been there for years.  Rain has been coming on and off in my life, and it feels like the bleakest hour, and I have been just waiting around for the sky to open up and rain to fall on my head.  I kept myself protected, I kept myself safe, and got used to this little black storm for years.  I even felt that it was what I needed, what I deserved and eventually came to the conclusion that it was what I wanted, what was right for me.

But now, I am seeing the edge of my own little black cloud bank.  I can see the sunlight, just beyond that white line.  I don't know what waits for me beyond, in the sunlight, but I can see real true happiness coming for me in the promise of no more rain.  Not saying that there won't be the occasional storm, because everybody needs a little rain from time to time to clean out the system, but I think that my life is going to get a lot sunnier soon.

To get ready for this new, sunshine filled life I am beginning to blossom, or as one of my long distance friends says, I am beginning to make my way out of my chrysalis.  I am signing up for classes, going out of my way to meet people and sometimes talk to them.  I smile more at people, and find that if you smile at someone and give them a cheery "Good day!", they will often smile back and respond in kind.  I really really like people, and I don't feel as scared anymore.

I live in one of the most crime filled places in the United States.  We recently had, in my city, our twenty first and twenty second homicides, one where a man was gunned down in the streets.  We have a horrible reputation, and cities that surround us often try to avoid us.  But I don't see that violence, I don't see that crime. I look in people's faces and often see potential for some sort of good in the world, some sort of happiness.  I hope I never have to lose that outlook.  Our news programs and media often highlight the violence, the terror, the fear and the hate that goes on around us, because fear is a real emotion that we all can experience.  By bringing these awful horrible things to the front of everybody's mind, they create fear and the masses don't realize that they are being emotionally manipulated to stay inside, lock up their children, keep them indoors watching more media, more fear, more hate.  It is very rare to see the sunlight in the news anymore, in the world anymore because all we see is the dark storm clouds overhead, and don't look for the edge where everything is going to be better, if we just look up and see that the storm clouds are moving away from us.

Smile at someone today, and say "Good Day" to them. See if they don't smile back.  It makes a world of difference to someone, sometimes.

Love and lollipops,

ToryLynn