Food, relaxation and creativity - daily accountability
Welcome! Weight loss is a stressful business, and that stress can even torpedo your efforts. So here's a thread for making sure we keep up with relaxing activities, and creative ones too if possible. It's also because I'm disabled and can't do the heavy-duty exercise so many people are doing. Other folks here also can't, through disability or illness or just being run off their feet, so this is for you too!
Thanks to the folks in the Women on WEED thread, which I've modelled this on.
Request to anyone joining: in order to be disability-friendly, please do not use any flashing or blinking images or smilies, and it would also help if you could break up walls of text into paragraphs.
I'm 39, vegan, losing about 20lb, and unable to exercise in any regular way due to having severe ME/CFS. I need to keep up with doing gentle stretches to help with pain relief, and the odd little walk. I also want to get back into doing breathing exercises/meditation regularly, and there's a thing called the Miracle Ball Method where you lie on a grapefruit-sized somewhat squishy ball and do deep breathing, which is both for relaxation and unknotting muscles.
Creativity to me mostly means quilting and music, usually playing the harp. I play both lever and wire harp, pretty much a beginner at wire harp though. They take a lot of tuning!
My diet is calorie counting, vegan wholefoods diet, and generally involves a small breakfast and having either soup with a slice of bread or salad for lunch. I don't have much trouble staying on plan in terms of calories (1250), so I probably won't mention them if it's less than 50 cal either side of the target. I'm more interested in chatting about what I'm eating, the fun side of recipes and so forth. I like food being a creative thing.
Yesterday: discovered that if we're too tired to cook and sling veggie burgers and chips into the oven, along with peas, it actually comes out fine in terms of calories. Obviously it's not the world's healthiest meal, but it's passable, and really useful to have in reserve. In fact, I ended up slightly under my usual calorie allowance, probably because I've got a cold and am less hungry for snacks.
I didn't manage the breathing exercises because breathing at all is a little challenging right now, let alone slowly and rhythmically. I did do some Miracle Ball Method in an attempt to nobble the muscle rigidity I've got around my left shoulder and upper back, and a few stretches. At ten last night we went out for a walk, the first I've done in ages, to see if that would help loosen up my muscles for pain relief. I think it did help a bit.
Creativity: not much, spent a bit of time playing with fabric but no cutting or sewing.
Date porridge with a bit of salt in it, aka salted caramel porridge, continues to be the best thing ever.
We're a bit short of food supplies at the moment, so lunch was one of those salads you throw together from what you can manage. Quinoa and chick peas as the base again, a carrot, and as there was no spinach or tomatoes or anything like that, I hunted down a slightly elderly avocado and a few olives, before putting in a bit of salad dressing I'd previously made up. We cut away a fair bit of the avocado as it was bruised, so the calorie count ended up a bit higher than usual but still fine, and it was surprisingly tasty.
First take-out on this diet in the evening! I've been doing some calculations, and it looks like pizza is actually lower-calorie than noodles, the way I get it at least. But pizza costs twice as much and often takes an hour to be delivered, so noodles it was, as it usually is when we get take-out. I dutifully counted the pieces of deep-fried tofu and reckon the whole thing came to 566 or so, depending on how much oil went in. That's manageable every now and then. I remember when a friend in a similar situation, in terms of being in a couple where one is severely disabled with ME and the other also has significant health problems, talked about how being able to afford take-out once every week or so can make a huge difference to your mental health and is an important part of self-care. I realised that we'd been feeling guilty about getting the odd take-out, and how we really shouldn't, it's an incredibly useful thing for us. If you can't manage cooking for some reason, then sitting around feeling guilty about it while your blood sugar drops and your mood gets worse is not a good solution.
Relaxation and exercise
I'm keeping up fairly well with doing two minutes of leg stuff (plies, pelvic circles, lunge stretches) while I brush my teeth, switching exercise when the electric toothbrush does its 30s reminder. It means that I actually spend long enough brushing my teeth, which are feeling better for it, and when we went for a walk the other day, I realised that I was handling it far better than expected. Normally when I go on the first walk in ages, my knees hurt a lot afterwards, and they were pretty much fine this time. I vaguely recall that leg exercises are important when you have dysautonomia, something about blood flow I think. I also managed to do stretches in bed while watching TV again just before we went to sleep.
Meditation/deep breathing - currently postponed until I can breathe properly again. I HATE HAVING A COLD.
Creativity
I may have mentioned that we spend half the week at my flat and half at my partner's. At my partner's, the sewing project is requilting the bedspread I made years ago, which is made up of strips of 30 degree diamonds sewn together. Each side of a diamond is 6" and I am outline quilting all five hundred and something of them. I got three done yesterday! There was a moment of panic when the audiobook I was listening to finished before I expected it, but thankfully I had the next one stored on my phone. My partner was doing some crafting at his desk, so it was nice sitting together, doing crafty stuff and chatting about politics.
In between sewing stints I sorted out marking the strings on my new wire harp. Lever and pedal harps have red C strings and black or blue F strings, but with wire harps all the strings are made of the same material, and many of us need to mark them in some way to see where we are. The previous owner had put a bit of nail varnish on the Cs and Fs, but a luthier I know had warned me off using nail varnish or paint as it is bad for the sound. I'd previously been using Posca paint markers on the smaller wire harp on loan from a friend which lives at my flat, and he's right, the sound is so much clearer since I scrubbed that off. He is all in favour of Sharpie markers, though, as the layer of ink deposited is so thin. Getting the nail varnish off with ultra-fine wire wool was a strange job, it made this horrible sort of sqeak, but eventually it was done, I gave all the strings a rub down while I was at it, and then spent a while squatting next to the harp, carefully covering the Cs in red pen and the Fs in red pen. It looks lovely, they come out looking jewel-like. Unfortunately my hand slipped and a bit of the red pen got on the harp frame, but after frantically rubbing at it with a damp tissue, almost all of the mark is off, and you really can't notice the tiny, tiny bit of ink left in a corner you never look at.
I played Fair Molly a couple of times once the ink had dried, but it's going to need a few solid tunings before I can practise properly and I was too tired for that last night. It'll make such a difference being able to orient myself on the strings quickly. I got a decent way into the Ann Heymann wire harp book before starting lessons, playing with the harp on my right shoulder as that's what I'm used to from lever harp, and my teacher has me playing with the harp on my left shoulder and my right hand in the bass instead, plus a different approach to sounding the strings. So it's taking quite a while to relearn those pieces with my hands in the reversed positions. I don't really need to, it's not what he's teaching me, but it's nice to have extra tunes to play.
Well, that was a strange day. Partner went to a protest in the morning, and discovered that holding a sign up in cold, very windy weather is really hard on your hands. Hopefully it's not a sprain, he's been messing around with cold packs and such and says it's doing better this morning. But he returned home exhausted, napped, and then needed a lot of help so that we could get food. I was feeling bouncy, and that recent month of not leaving my flat at all has induced cabin fever, so we went for a walk to the Chinese supermarket nearby, bought various tasty things, and afterwards I wildly overdid it by doing some cleaning and then most of the cooking for a stir-fry. But you have to live. I had a look at the wheat gluten they sell, as it's meant to be incredibly high in protein, and found that the ultra-tasty "mock abalone" is way too high in fat, but the "mock chicken" is the same thing without all the added oil. I sliced it up and made sure it got nicely fried (minimal oil, of course) and seasoned with soy sauce. It was fun getting mooli, which we don't have very often, and beansprouts and such, and of course pak choi. It ended up making more like three portions, so there's one in the fridge one of us can have for lunch, and my calories were about 1100 for the day. Ah, no, I forgot to log that apple. 1181.
After the Chinese supermarket, we had nipped across the road to a pharmacy to pick up tiger balm for him, and I asked the pharmacist to recommend something for this cold. He suggested sudafed (pseudoephedrine) after asking what meds I'm on, and I picked up some Olbas pastilles. He did not, unfortunately, ask what my medical conditions are, and anyway the list is so long that I probably wouldn't have thought to list Restless Leg Syndrome, since that's been under control ever since we sussed out that it was being caused by anaemia and put me on iron a few years ago. This turned out to be a problem. I didn't do my stretches because when we put on some TV to watch before bed, I was freezing cold and my heart rate was near 100, which is not normal for me when I'm lying down. Then I had the worst night of RLS I've ever had. My poor partner didn't sleep well either, I was tossing and turning so much I was practically spinning. Weirdly, we've woken up at half-ten feeling not too bad, so hopefully I'll be OK for board games later. I might skip showering, though, too tired and too cold. The overexertion will apparently have been part of the RLS problem, and I'm guessing is likely to be why I was so cold. I've had ME for twenty years, you'd think I'd know better by now. Ah well.
I got two diamonds quilted and got the harp tuned, then played some pentatonic exercises, with later a few runs through some tunes. The top octave of the harp is holding its tuning very poorly and is also the bit nearest the window, where the wood tends to feel chilly when I pick it up. I'm going to have to work more on insulating it. I did tackle that tuning peg which is too loose, only now it's a bit too tight! But they're generally less creaky than they were when it arrived, so it must be acclimatising to the temperature.
As expected, the crash from overdoing it started to hit yesterday. I managed to get through board games with a couple of friends round, though tired and chilly, and certainly not up to baking biscuits! The cold seems to be in retreat, huzzah. I'm no longer handcuffed to a box of tissues, though my lips are split and peeling which hurts.
I got a bit of harp practise in and two diamonds sewn. I'm really enjoying getting into a regular routine with the sewing, especially here at my partner's flat where I'm just plodding on with requilting the bedspread. At my flat, where I'm making a quilt top, I get stalled on design decisions for a lot of time. I definitely need to get more harp practise in, the lesson's this Thursday.
I pretty much gave up on doing any stretches, I was far too exhausted, and am still postponing breathing exercises until I'm less coldy. Today or tomorrow, I think. I'm probably still in post-exertional crash mode.
Food was unexciting, sourdough toast for breakfast, ditto plus beetroot soup for lunch, and leftover stir-fry for supper, which went slightly soggy but hey, it was a relief for my partner not to have to cook. I had 100g of fresh tofu, sliced with pesto on it, for a snack in the evening, as my calories were on the low side, I reckon the extra protein is nice, and mainly because it's delicious. I should use that as a snack more often. 56g of protein yesterday, not bad for 1258 cal on a vegan diet.
I wonder if I can buy that prepared wheat gluten more cheaply somehow, though I can't find it online. I'd like to start using it more often, it's an excellent protein source and really tasty. It's £1.50/tin at the Chinese supermarket near my partner's, I'll compare at the one near mine. I seem to be eating more tofu, which is good.
Yesterday was stressy, a friend was having a horrific weekend and I spent most of the day supporting her. I had the first urges to stress-eat, but noticed them, didn't act on them, and they didn't last long. I think it's been mostly boredom eating that's been getting me. I'm having trouble with premenstrual anxiety and am very worried about a situation with my home care agency. My weights down another pound, which is nice. Breakfast was a bagel with marmite, we ran out of my own bread, and lunch was late because I was talking to my friend online, so I grabbed a pouch of rice, quinoa and beans, and my partner nuked part of a red pepper for me to add. He made an ordinary tomato sauce with tofu on pasta for supper.
Still no exercise (apart from walking back to my flat in the evening) or meditation, though the cold is definitely improving, and I did some decent work on harp exercises.
And the next day was stressier still! Much more in the way of urges to stress eat, and since sometimes I do actually need to get a snack, I was paying attention and figuring out what to do about that. It wasn't too bad, I had a packet of crisps (when you urgently need salt, crisps are actually useful, and I got low-fat ones) and later a couple of oat cakes because I'd taken meds on an empty stomach. No exercise again, mostly due to the stress rather than the cold, but considering that I didn't even get showered until just before supper, and that I did manage to finish sewing a block and do some harp practice, not bad overall. I'm starting to get the hang of playing harp exercises with my eyes shut so that I can concentrate on listening.
This morning I woke up to find a racist attacking me on FB for being a disabled woman. Fun times. I've reported him to his employer, and hopefully he won't hunt me down. He's on the other side of the planet, but they can do a lot these days.
I got meditation and stretches done yesterday! Nearly 20 min meditation, too! Also I had to fish out my TENS machine and eventually gave in and took painkillers, which did at least kick in after supper.
In terms of quilting, there was a lot of climbing on a chair to pin fabric to the design wall, sitting on the sofa, contemplating it, and changing round the bits of fabric. I'm getting more used to harp practice, too, and getting into doing an exercise repeatedly.
Food was fine: date porridge for breakfast, bread (walnut and brazil nut sourdough, came out beautiful) and beetroot soup for lunch, pizza for dinner (bit late as apparently one of their delivery people had an accident, poor soul). I wrote up the pizza, which I'd swear had fewer olives than usual, and it doesn't seem to be that high in calories. Probably because it's only 3/4 of a 10", which is the equivalent of half a 12", and doesn't have cheese or meat on it.
The stressy thing with my home care agency seems to be over, and they've dealt with it appropriately, unlike in the past. I had to explain to my team leader why I'd been so terrified to report it, all the bullying and bigotry I'd been told to put up with by her predecessor. They still can't sort out whether I'm meant to be getting massage or not, though.
Oof. Today was spent reporting my local pharmacy to the regulatory authorities for no end of awful stuff. Please let the stress let up soon? At least they believed me, were absolutely horrified, and are taking it all very seriously. The friend who proofread my complaint's verdict was, "What a bunch of negligent, malevolent b*llocks." (Which I suspect this site wouldn't star out, but hey, spirit as well as the letter of the law.) Totally exhausting, though, and I've been dealing with it all this week and some of last week. I do finally have my meds, more or less in the right doses, and that's a relief.
Yesterday was a good harpy day. Bit of practice during the day, then the lesson, which went well. In the evening I had a go at the lever harp for the first time in ages, tackling some ridiculously tricky Bach. I doubt I'll bother to edit it for lever harp, the lever changes are too silly, but it was fun trying and sounded beautiful for, oh, whole bars at a time!
I'm so tired I can't even remember much of yesterday! Food went fine, only 1100 cal, we were too tired for real cooking so breakfast was date porridge, lunch was soup and toast, and supper was pasta, peas and pesto. Edit: oops, that was the day before. Yesterday involved an actual salad, and my partner made a nice tomato sauce with pasta for dinner.
In terms of creativity, we spent some of the evening making the sign I was to take to the protest today. He drew on the letting and I coloured it in with an audiobook on, nice and peaceful.
Oof, it's cold today. Next time I go to a protest I'm taking the wheelchair cosy, which is like half a sleeping bag. My hands and feet were so cold they hurt by the time I got home, and that's despite two thick pairs of socks and two pairs of gloves. Fantastic protest, though. We went with a friend and their mum, and ran into several more. Do you burn significantly more calories when it's cold and windy? I was getting colder than the others because they were walking and I was in the wheelchair, and there was some rain on and off. There's only one photo of me, we were too bundled up to be messing around with cameras and my touchscreen wouldn't recognise my fingers when I tried, but I look rather pale in it, lips the same colour as my face.
I'll be over the usual number of calories today as I had a bigger breakfast before going and then a nut bar while we were out. I don't really care, I'm just curious. It's the first protest I've made it to, if you don't count Pride marches (and I missed Pride this year), and I'd like to make it to more. We'll see how long it knocks me back for in terms of the ME, though.
The heated blanket at my flat died, so another one is on the way, and Argos can do same-day delivery even if you order at 17.30! In four hours at most I will have a heated blanket and a cat attached to it, huzzah. Right now I should hydrate, I didn't drink much before going out (and still was longing for the loo by the time we were back) and have been too tired to do more than sit in the living room since coming back, and I'm getting a headache. Still, great day.
Food, relaxation and creativity - daily accountability
