Monday, March 18, 2024

Weekend Recap Coming Tomorrow


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Kind of in a mental spot right now and don't have the brain power to throw together a post right now so I'll see ya tomorrow.

Happy Monday!

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Friday, March 15, 2024

What I'm Reading This Week #11

Top o' the morning to ya, this Friday before St. Patty's Day. ☘️  We're halfway through the month somehow so if you had beginning of the month goals you wanted to meet in an area of your life, are you still on track?  I had my deep tissue massage with a woman who used proper pressure this time which was awesome.  I still could've stood a little more but it was good and I'll likely go to her again.  I had my appointment right after with my chiro, not Shrek.  Since his office is right next to the shockwave dude, I had a post-it ready and when he closed the door I flashed it.

"FYI - you have set the bar for chiropractors unreachably high..."

He smiled- I flipped it over.

"Are you SURE you don't do shockwave therapy!?"

He laughed and said he loved it and how I kept it on the downlow.  I showed him the pain drawing I presented the brute and said "if I'd come to you with this, how would you have proceeded?"  He said it very obviously looked like a posterior chain issue and stemming from my usual trouble spots.  He said while my plantar fascia is affected, he didn't think it was presenting as plantar fasciitis.  I asked if the shockwave was a waste of time and he said some people respond really well, other people it does nothing or very little.  He said it can't hurt but he wouldn't go past the 6-8 typical protocol.  He had me lay down on my stomach and checked my calves in the exact way the brute did only two days prior and told me they were absolutely fine and said "oh wow, yeah...LOTS of adhesions in there."  I KNEW IT!!!!!  I knew I wasn't crazy.  He did some release on my problem areas, where I ASKED for it with the other guy, and then asked if the other guy was adjusting my feet.  I said no, so he did my ankles and I told him I was going to finish out the shockwave with the other dude then come back to him.  He said he was going to look over my x-rays at lunch and because the other one was out the beginning of the week, I would go back to my guy and have him work on me again then do my next shockwave Friday.  That'll be #4 under my belt so 2-3 more after that.  I'll schedule those and tell him that I'll see how things improve.  I DO NOT want him adjusting my ankles.  The LMT told me she'd been adjusted by him a few times and he was aggressive and she hasn't been back.  When my guy asked how it was going I raised my eyebrows and shook my head and said "he's a bit aggressive" and he smiled and said "I get that feedback a lot from people who toggle back and forth between us."  So yeah, my time with that schmuck is limited.  I will say that after our walk, I didn't have quite as much pain so I'm hopeful my guy will get me where I need to be.  

Now let's get to: 






The 5 Best Exercises to Relieve Shoulder Pain (Mine are being real buttholes over the past month.  I have to say I'm glad I remembered I had this baby because it has helped loosen things up!)

I’m a dietitian — here’s the biggest mistake people make when trying to lose weight (Sorry but I don't agree.  I totally get where they're coming from but when you have more than 30 lbs to lose or you're working toward being able to do an activity with a weight limit, you unfortunately need that metric.)

Pasta Can Help You Lose Weight, Unless You’re Making These 8 Mistakes  (Good, we're in the clear!  If you'd told us we'd be eating lentil or chickpea pasta on the regular, I would've laughed in yo face!)

How To Prevent Sarcopenia & Retain Muscle As You Age  (It hits you faster than you think!)

Stress-Eating and Can’t Stop? New Research Just Found a Scientific Explanation  (Really interesting and tricky but my Lord the foods they used for the study?  Seriously?)

15 Natural Remedies for Arthritis Pain Relief (I guess I get to start paying attention to this kind of crap now. 🙄)

Science-Backed Benefits Of Ginger Tea & The Best Times To Drink It  (I like to add this tea with a green tea bag to make it taste better and get the benefits they talk about because green tea alone tastes like liquid sadness.)



Dave Grohl watching U2 at the closing night of their MSG Sphere residency is EveryDad  (I feel both elated and creepy watching the video but he's so pure I can't help it.)

Not sure what the weekend has in store for us yet.  The Mr is recovering from his leg stuff with more to go over the next weeks so I'm sure that'll dictate some of it.  

How was your week?  Any weekend plans?

====================
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Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Struggle Bus Midweek Check In





Happy hump day everyone!  I hope your week is going well.  

Y'all.  I don't know what da heck is up with this week but it can kiss my dimpled azz.  Saturday just really got to me and Sunday was the first time in 5 weeks I didn't drink my 25 oz water before getting out of bed.  It set a tone because I didn't reach my water goal for the day either which was about 30% less than it should've been.  I didn't do my bike that day either, which is optional Sunday anyway but still.  Monday wasn't a whole lot better on the water front coming in at about 80% of my goal.  That was mammogram day for me and vein day for him.  I had to laugh at the tech who was 67 years old and politely let me know she wasn't going to do the amount of pressure I requested and how she never heard of such a thing.  Really?  Have you heard of unnecessary callbacks, lady?  Have you been on the receiving end of them twice and gone through the death spiral for a few days??  But that's not why I laughed though.  She told me I've obviously lost weight since the last time I was there which I knew that wasn't true and said "why do you say that?"  She said the contour of my boobs were different and showed me the difference from last year to this year.  Well my sweet friend, after checking, I'm actually up 13 lbs from last year so time for you to head to the eye doctor.  (The sneak peek at the comps allowed me to see all is well on that front.)  I'm guessing it was the droopy arm fat area that really gave her the tip off but its less desirable to say "I see you have a built in bat suit from weight loss."

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I didn't do the bike that day either. I think in my head, I felt like "you busted your ass doing it every day last week burning 1000 calories a day total and you see what that got you... nothing."  Positive attitude of a lifelong dieter.  😜  I knew I was at the top of a slippery slope if I didn't get it together and I think reading all of these stories of people getting their 8-10,000 steps in and having weight melt off but of course not me just pissed me off.  

What also pissed me off was the neighbor is going through a slam phase coming off of a 3 week quieter (for him) phase.  In addition, some new ho is walking around urgently in shoes in the bedroom that backs up to our living room.  My anxiety is through the roof and I was barely able to get more than 3 hours sleep for 4 nights in a row which I know also heavily contributes to cortisol and holding onto weight.  Monday night was the first time I had to wear earplugs in both ears because he slammed so hard around midnight that my adrenaline shot through the roof just as I was about to go to sleep from exhaustion.  Not to say I got a stellar night's sleep after a 2:40am pee break and spent an hour or so getting back to a light sleep but maybe an hour to 90 minutes better than the night before.  I even made sure I drank herbal tea at dinner but I don't know, I may not be able to drink anything with dinner anymore or start eating earlier I guess.

The Mr's vein procedure went well so he's wearing his Frank N. Furter stocking.  They had to pivot from what they intended on doing since he's going to need a touch up spot with the RF stuff first to better close a spot that had an undisclosed blood clot.  Then they'll go back in the coming weeks with the foam.  That's a big boy too so really hoping all goes well on that for him because the only other option is vein removal which he doesn't want to do.

Another "fun" mental leveler from the weekend was seeing pictures of a family member putting together their centerpieces for their wedding using flowers Mom bought.  That was her project.  She was supposed to be there and was looking forward to it.  I've gotta admit, it stings a little that I'm not asked to be involved in any capacity on it.  I offered and it was accepted that I would finish the project that Mom started for the bridal shower.  I asked about it three times so I wouldn't be in a rush situation and when it would be the only thing not answered in emails, I stopped asking.  I told Mom I tried and whatever happens with it, happens.  It was brought up last week and how much Mom already had done so her sib was going to finish it.  Well, that's great but did you ever think maybe I wanted to finish what she started??  You get to finish everything else you guys started for the wedding.  It just feels like we don't belong and no one wants us included anymore. 

So yeah, that's where I am this week.

Is the week treating you any better?

====================
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Monday, March 11, 2024

Roller Coaster Weekend Recap





Where da hell da weekend go!?!  My weigh in got me ZERO and unfortunately, I wasn't shocked by that given the sheer amount of inflammation and pain I was in from that assknuckle adjusting me.  Is a chiropractor supposed to literally huff and puff after he's tried to twist your back into submission?  That guy did.  I'm going to have to tell him tomorrow to back the hell off.  I had the worst nerve firings afterward in my thighs and I've never had that before.  It kept me from sleeping and I can't take anti-inflammatories because it basically voids the shockwave response.  I finally relented at 3am and applied magnesium foam only up top so I could finally sleep.   I know he's trying to open the SI joint but I'm not down with forcing it to the point my heart rate is 113 BEFORE I even go in when I'm usually at 62.  The only good to come out of it is he's out Friday and said I could go to my guy (I'm sure he's tired of being reminded I was his patient first) to keep working on the joint.  When I was checking out, I told her I needed to coordinate an end of week trigger point massage with MY guy at the blessing of Shrek and the only thing we could coordinate was Thursday when Shrek is still in but if you think I'm missing that opportunity, you're nuts.  I saw him come to get another patient and he smiled and said hi to me (I wasn't sure he'd remember me since it's been over 4 years) and I swear I almost cried!  So my thought is to walk in and say "are you SURE you don't know how to use the shockwave machine???"  I'm going to ask if he's looked at my file at all yet and hoping he says no.  If he does, I'm going to show him my little drawing I gave to the other guy and say "let's pretend I didn't go next door for shockwave therapy and I came back to you to show you this.  I want to know how you would approach treating this."  I want to see if he immediately goes to the SI joint also or if he sees the trouble I've been having with my calves and says those need addressed.  My goal is to get the shockwave stuff out of the way, see how much insurance is going to charge for this stuff since we're on a different plan now and make my way back to my guy.  In the meantime, I'mma BEG him to learn the shockwave or get his own machine.  I hate this other schmuck but I have no choice but to go to him for the shockwave therapy so I have to continue seeing him whether I like it or not.  He's supposedly worked on the back of many big name rock stars but guess what, I don't give a crap what Metallica wanted, I would like you to actually listen to what I'm telling you.

The Mr was craving lasagna so we got that for lunch since I had nothing to bring to the table idea wise.  We decided to go walk at a local cat litter box (aka beach) in the blustery wind which thankfully kept others away.  I hobbled along noting the new to me pain on the other side of my back now with my fresh-ish adjustment.  The Mr and I talked about not so fun stuff like end of life things, the continuing grief journey that isn't getting better and how the world is just so effed in so many ways.  We sat at a picnic table and I bawled wondering how the hell I'm ever going to be good enough for the Mr as this physical and emotional mess.  I feel like he's put up with so much just to be with me.  He's literally lost all of his family and friends from his hometown and it's like for what, because he ended up with someone who encouraged him to speak his mind and do what HE wants??  (His dad is always excluded from that statement- he just wanted him to be happy and always treated me well.)  I carry tremendous guilt about that even though I know it's not my fault and so many people's manipulation of him became very apparent once he wasn't a 'yes man' anymore.  I cried about how he did not sign on for a limpy wench who always seems to gear up for something big and then gets sidelined by something big.  So you know, we kept it light.  We watched some Netflix because our card expires by the end of the week and we don't give them our credit card so I'll have to wait until Christmas or something to finish any shows.

Sunday, if the Mr hadn't said anything, I wouldn't have known it was clock change day.  Doesn't matter I was still up until 4am (3am) because the one neighbor was a slamming douche canoe until those hours.  We watched Sunday Morning in bed then the Mr grabbed laundry.  I pulled out the long sleeved stuff from the closet and it made me very sad but not for the reasons you may think.



This was the first year that most of the long sleeved shirts I am always so excited to pull out, didn't fit well or at all.  The eff it attitude of grief, the "firsts" and just where my body is deciding to hold everything only left me with about 4-5 comfortable options.  They're only 10-15 lbs away so it's not like "get rid of 'em!" but the depression about no weight loss (along with the confusing news to both of us about losing lean muscle on a week we ADDED an extra strength session) was very defeating.  I guess I should've only kept out the ones that fit and I thought maybe from the time I pulled them out (the end of October) to now that maybe I would be able to see a drastic difference and fit into them but nope.  I left one out that fits really uncomfortably that I can try on throughout the year as a measure but it's still disheartening and so sick of this shit.  I am sick of my body constantly working against me.

I was craving oatmeal, which have I every friggin' day practically, so I made that, a banana and coffee around noon before starting to work on this.  I know with both of us having leg stuff this week that we wouldn't have a choice but to do a Sunday leg day.  It was considerably colder and actually giving us some flurries so I watched that for a little while before figuring it was time to get the show on the road.  We did Fitness Blender lower body and we both wore the new barefoot shoes I got.  I asked Shrek what he thought about those and he said he couldn't do it- some people really like them and others don't.  Aka- standard non-committal pseudo doc response.  So I found these since they were on sale and got a pair for both of us to at least do strength training in.  I LOVE the way they feel.  My feet were in a lot less pain than wearing the Brooks and insoles I usually wear.  My theory is using barefoot shoes will allow me to better feel and build those intrinsic muscles in my feet as I lift.  I felt my alignment was so much better and not kind of rolling my foot into submission by way of insole.  I don't know that I would use them for walking necessarily especially as I'm recovering but there are versions that have a thicker sole for walking or hiking.  They get solid 4+ stars but if I decide that barefoot may be something to explore in the future seriously, then I would likely get something that has better sole wear.  For lifting on a padded floor and potentially 'around the house' shoes that don't force the shortening of the calf muscles, these are totally fine for us.  I had to return my friend's call I missed while we were working out and then it was time for meal prep which is always fun on it's own but throw in leg day before and it was extra spicy.  Then the weekend was over and wind down time.

I haven't been sleeping well either waking up at 3 or 4am every day never to get back to sleep or nodding off while we're watching stuff and then not being able to get to sleep until 3-4am.  I really don't understand why my sleep has ALWAYS been so bad and everything else just makes it worse.  I don't really care for how I went into the chiro just thinking I was going to get some damn laser therapy on my feet and now am suddenly a full on chiro patient taking on bills we weren't planning on.  We switched to a higher deductible plan this year so everything is out of pocket for the first few thousand and between the Mr and I we're going to hit it way quicker than we anticipated, I think.  He starts the next portion of his leg vein procedures over the next few weeks.  This week alone I've got my mammogram today and he's got vein stuff.  Tomorrow I have Shrek and getting manhandled, Wednesday is the next treatment for his legs and dentist, Thursday is a trigger point massage (with someone who had better actually do her job) for me immediately followed by respite with my old chiro for one session.  So yeah, we've got something medically going on every day except Friday.  Welcome to late middle age!

Needless to say it was a roller coaster of emotions weekend in these parts.

Throw out some good vibes for us today as I get my mammies grammied and he gets his legs poked and prodded.

How was your weekend?

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Friday, March 8, 2024

What I'm Reading This Week #10

Well heidi ho there virtual neighbor and a happy Friday to you all!  I hope this isn't too riddled with typos as my proofreader fell asleep.  I had my appointment Monday for deep tissue massage and shockwave therapy.  The massage was weak.  I hate when tiny little people are LMT's.  When I say I want deep tissue, I mean you'd better be doing some friggin' digging in there and getting some adhesions on their way.  Oddly the most painful part was her touching the tops of my feet which felt like she was ripping the skin off.  I told her politely that wasn't comfortable and she was like "okay" then proceeded to do it again several times on each foot.  I thought 'you know what, if my heel goes into her face, I warned her.'  So I will never mention my feet again.  

Then it was time for the chiro.  Sadly, my chiro does not do the shockwave therapy which I'm incredibly upset by as I trust him implicitly.  The guy who does do it has always given me a super creepy vibe and is one of those dudes where if they reported on the news he had bodies in the basement you wouldn't be the least bit surprised.  He was 20 minutes late which didn't start things on the right foot with me.  I gave him a little drawing I did and he's like "where did you get that?"   I said I made it and I find it easier to explain things when there's a visual.  He was one of those people that is hard to read, has a dry sense of humor, likes to quiz you and these are all things I'm not a fan of.  He wasn't quite as creeper-y as I viewed him before but I made it clear I was NOT there to get my back cracked, I'm here for the laser...please drive through.  He started babbling about how plantar fasciitis doesn't usually present in both feet (funny...the 1,587 articles I saw said it can and does) and it's usually a problem higher up the chain.  I said if it was too high up the chain, we were done because nope, not cracking anything above the hips.  Again, I felt like he (along with the previous week's schmuck) was NOT listening to me when I told him I've had problems with adhesions in my calves.  He felt them and said one was a little taut but they felt fine.  Funny, I've lived in this body for 49 years, they're not fine.  The next thing I know, I'm getting a lower spine/hip x-ray.  He said the spacing is good in my spine but I do have some spots of arthritis and basically calcification has set into my SI joint on the left where I did a little worse on his range of motion tests.  He said that can trap nerves going down to the feet.  So trapped nerves on my left side make my right foot hurt like the devil after walking a limp like I have plantar fasciitis??  Fine, whatever.  So he twists me like a pretzel, he starts going higher than I want and I said "nope, back down."  Mofo, do not test me.   Then it was time for the shock wave.  It looked different than the other guy's and boy it felt different too.  He could do that for 20 minutes if he wanted (and I wished he would because I feel like I didn't do it for more than 2 minutes tops on each foot) so I'm thankful it didn't feel like the other one.  The Mr did some poking around online and said it sounded like the one guy did focused therapy where this is unfocused but covers more area.  As long as it eventually does what it's supposed to, I don't care.  I will use him for the laser stuff and when that is hopefully done, if I need my back loosened up, I'm going back to my guy, period.  But at least I know what area to dig around on to loosen things up so when he does twist me this afternoon and twice a week over the coming weeks.  So I will work on that in between visits to try to get mobility in the joint and hope for the best.  I really don't know if that's the problem or not but at this point, I'm just seeing him to get the laser at a cheap rate in comparison to everyone else around here who does it for 3-4x the amount.  My body...what a crap show.  🙄

Anyhoo... time to jump into:






Want to Age Well? Improve Your Balance With This 5-Minute Foot-Mobility Sequence  (If you want to know whether or not you need these, stand on one foot and pretend to drink something.  If you wobble at all, you may need to consider giving these a try)





9 Things Therapists Do When They Feel Lonely  (There are some really simple but good suggestions here!)


The Rise and Mysterious Fall of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Anyone else remember in the 80s when everyone and their mother had big lumps on their wrists and was getting surgery?)

60 Best Plants With Purple Flowers to Grow Outdoors  (I need to start thinking about what purple flowers to plant for Mom.)

Ready to do your taxes?  Click here for a referral code from my lady to give you a discount on H&R Block Services this year  (This woman totally saved my sanity this year!  Don't forget to go through Rakuten for some additional cashback!  Last post for the referral code.)

Miss a post here this week?  Catch up below:



Okay, final time for these instructions for anyone interested which thus far is two people:

For those who liked getting posts going straight to their mailboxes, I may have found a solution.  It takes a couple of minutes to set up, it looks daunting but it's not- I'm just really thorough with directions but then it'll all automate.  Go to Follow It, and click the FOLLOW button.  Scroll down a little and it defaults to 'newspaper', click SINGLE EMAILS.  Scroll just below that to the field that says ENTER YOUR EMAIL and do so.  Then click the FOLLOW FEED button underneath.  (You'll likely have to click the 'I'm not a robot' BS.)  It'll give you a message that says you need to go to the email you entered to confirm your subscription.  You'll have an email from Follow.It and click the CLICK HERE TO CONFIRM button in the email.  It'll bring up your Follow It account and a 'feed directory' default.  Up at the top click 'MY NEWS'.  On the left sidebar at the bottom, click SETTINGS.  For the default delivery channels, click SINGLE EMAILS.  Under delivery settings, click 7AM if you want the first available time to receive a new post if you read in the morning.  If you prefer to be reminded later, enter whatever time works with your schedule when you typically read/comment.  (Don't forget to enter your time zone.)  If you'd like to change your username to something other than the generic one they assign you, you can do that.  (Like if you want to use your old Spark handle or something you comment with on the blog so I know who is following that way, you can.)  Then make sure you scroll to the bottom and click SAVE CHANGES.   You're ready to receive my brand of realism straight to your inbox!  I will likely include these instructions in a few more posts and maybe on FB once or twice.

No weekend plans yet.  I feel like we don't really do those anymore which kind of sucks but meh, whatcha gonna do.  It'll consist of grocery pickups, laundry and meal prep at some point.    Thrillsville!

You got anything going on this weekend?

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Wednesday, March 6, 2024

One Month of Our New Plan Under Our Stretched Belts



Well, it's officially been a month since we started back to regular tracking and a new to us approach.  The approach was basically taking 11% off of our TDEE maintenance calories, making sure we got in a gallon of water per day (for a woman who could barely choke down 16 oz of the stuff, this was quite the goal), making sure to get in at least a walk on high cal days as well as cap them.  We also tried to make a 100g per day protein goal if possible.  (That was about a 30g jump for us which can be harder than you think.  By no means were we wanting to resemble anything keto.  Not our thing.)  We got a cheap but well reviewed smart scale that gave us our body fat and other metrics.  I have to say this was CRUCIAL determining our starting point for TDEE maintenance calories.  Without it, if we hadn't had that metric, we would've been 500 calories off which would've been catastrophic.  

Monday, March 4, 2024

Road Trip Goes South Weekend Recap

G'day all and a happy Monday to you and yours!  Let's get into this recap, shall we?

Friday night we were trying to decide what to do for the weekend.  I got roped in by some rando account to save a featured pizza place that visually reminded me of Peqoud's in Chicago.  Since we were doing the usual hem and hawing I blurted that place out.  He agreed, and we decided on trying the final location of a bakery that may or may not be similar to his childhood bakery that closed unexpectedly two years ago.  Okay, sounds like we've got us a road trip!  I looked on Cronometer and logged what I figured we'd have based on pics to get an idea of calories and off to bed we went.  There's one problem with that.  When I am thrown into a last minute travel situation, I get anxious, regardless of how close it is and my body laughs at the idea of sleep.  The last time I looked at the clock was 5:30am and I woke up at 7:30am.  Awesome.  The Mr grabbed the mail from the day before while I got ready and what would be the only highlight of my day came...