Hot-tober

I’m just a girl, standing in front of a weather forecast, wishing it would finally be fall.

Looks like I’ll get my wish tomorrow but holy heck, it’s been a hell of a hot-tober. I’m super glad I’m not marathon training – just 25k training, which is also trails and mostly walking, so that’s not as bad, but still feels bad to be sweating your ass off on Oct 25th when it climbs into the 90s mid-day on the hike.

Besides whinging about the weather, let’s catch up, shall we?

In terms of being of sound mind and body-

I got a female things checkup, and all looks good. Much better than the last few years. While I prefer to solve things without medication, and I’m still figuring out how to be productive and competitive without harnessing the power of anger, I do appreciate being a calmer human being even outside of my pills taking care of the actual problems they were intended to solve. I have a preventative regular checkup and a preventative dermatologist skin check scheduled in January as well. Yay, adulting.

Speaking of adulting, the last few times I’ve visited the doctor or dentist, I’ve had inconsistent (and sometimes high) blood pressure readings. I wrote it off as white-coat syndrome, but I figured I should do some due-diligence on it to make sure. And… it’s kind of inconsistent at home too. Sometimes normal, sometimes a few points over normal, and one day it was super high.

Let’s go back to the place where I REALLY don’t want to have to take medication if I don’t have to. So – my goal over the next 3 months is to bring my blood pressure back down to consistently normal and I spent some time researching how to do that. This made me take a real good look at the thing I’m most willing to change – and seems like will make the most impact – my diet. I started thinking about it over the summer, but I didn’t really follow through. If I can be honest with myself, my diet has gone from super high quality to pretty poor over the last 5 years and maybe just calorie counting isn’t enough to stay healthy and feel good.

So, here we go:

• SALT. Holy crap, I eat a lot of salt already and my tastebuds are calibrated for me to want to add more. Totally works when I’m crushing long distance training in the heat. Doesn’t really right now. I started looking in despair about how to do a low salt diet and Joel suggested what his doctor suggested – start with not adding any. Goal is to not add salt to anything that’s already processed. If I make a potato into wedges in the air fryer – I can add (a little) salt. I can’t add salt to a frozen dinner that’s already 50% of my daily value. I’m not proud to admit I do this, but… I do.
• DIET QUALITY. I used to eat really healthy. Like, so many veggies, some fruits, whole grains, lean protein, some nuts/legumes, all the good stuff. I even tracked it, which made me generally eat very healthy so I could accommodate some splurges (which decreased my points) and still stay above a certain range. I can’t find the damn scale, so I’m going to START with more general goals:
  • Reintroduce fruit into my life. This week, I’ve got watermelon (which increases potassium, which is good for blood pressure) and blueberries (I don’t eat much in the blue/purple categories these days). If I don’t have a smoothie in the morning, I need some fruit in my afternoon snack. 1-2 servings a day
  • All the veggies. Salad for breakfast (unless I have a smoothie, then salad as an afternoon snack). Extra veggies with the prepared healthy meals (e.g. extra frozen peas with my cacio y pepe Snap Kitchen pasta). Fewer prepared meals so I can get different vegetables (e.g. making my own chicken pasta with spinach and asparagus vs the same peas in my cacio every time).
  • Eating my processed low calorie foods (hot pockets and frozen meals) very infrequently and not repurchasing them once they are gone.
• Aim for 1500 calories 5x week, up to 2000 calories 1x week, up to 2500 calories 1x week (long day). There’s very few days I get fewer than 300 activity calories (maybe 1-2 days a week when I just take a short walk) spreading out the deficit will help me not have to starve those days. 1500 is doable when I’m eating healthy with no splurges. 2000 is doable with a small splurge. 2500 is very doable for days I do 1000+ calorie long workouts and if I need to stretch it a little I will (e.g. I burned 1500 on my 14 mile hike last weekend I may stretch that to like 2700).

I’ll try this for November and see how things are going. Besides the BP normalization, I’d really like to come into the end of January at least under the “obese” range (179.9 for me). I’m much fitter than the average bear and carry way more muscle so I’m smaller size-wise, but it’s still that convo with the doctor that I’d love to not have to have. So, goals! Let’s go!

Let’s ignore the fact that we’re heading into the holiday season and I’m going on an 8-day cruise. We’ll make it work. I’ve done it before!

Where I’m doing great is moving my ass. My doctor asked, “are you exercising” and I just said “yes” but um… yeah, I’m walking like 9+ hours a week and running 2-3x week and lifting weights 3x week. I think that qualifies.

Hikes and runs will just continue to progress over the next few months to be longer, so hopefully that will help in the above quest. This is the easy part for me, especially now that I’m done with triathlon for the year and can get out the door on my own two feet (either moving quickly for a run or slower for a walk) there’s no real friction, unlike prepping for riding bikes or getting to a pool to swim. And… it’s finally starting to be temperate enough for walks or even runs whenever (not just at crack of dawn or after dark) so that will help so, so, so much.

I wish now this showed walking, because that’s a lot of my activity these days, but check the hour totals on the weeks:

My worst week was 9.5h activity, best two were 11.5h. It’s like back when I was half ironman training, but less intense. Which is great for not eating like I’m a trash compactor.

Goals this month:

• I did DECENTLY at weights but I do see two weeks where I only did 2x week not 3. There should be no excuse in November as long as I time leg day far enough away from long hikes (oops last week, killer leg day Fri + 14 mile hike Sat = Sunday NOFUNDAY). And I’m going to try to get to the gym for at least two of them per week. I can do it at home, but my workouts stagnate and I get better quality workouts at the gym.
• We are doing a 25k (15.6 mile) race (let’s call it a hike) on Nov 16! Goal again is to simply complete it, maybe do a little bit of running but mostly hiking.
• Start working my 2-3x week runs (let’s be fair, it’s looking like 2x week above) up in distance a bit. 3 miles is easy before work, but I’d like to extend one of them longer at least every other week.

Longer term, we are targeting a 50k (31.1 miles OMG) in March, and we need to get both our mileage and speed up (we won’t complete it in the time allotted if we just walk it). So, over the winter we’ll increase our road running distance to 13-15 miles (also, I’d like to race at least one half marathon if not some other road races), increase our long hikes to… maybe marathon distance (I need to look up a 50k training plan) and incorporate run/walk intervals into some hikes. But, for now, just want to get through the race and keep slowly building distance in both runs and hikes and start smashing the two together.

On the non-health related stuffs… I cleaned out a drawer. Yay! I did a thing. It’s truly on Joel when he wants to start his projects so I’m not pushing him. But I’m trying to pick one small thing in my stuff to clean out each week so I can make small incremental progress there. I also feel like I adulted by doing doctor stuff and trying to fix my diet so I’m not going to put a crapton of pressure on myself to do more.

In the book, I’m at 33k words (so 10k in the last month), but some are notes. I haven’t had that much focused quiet time to write lately, either due to schedule stuffs or Joel wanting to do other stuffs or just not having the brain to do stuffs when I have the time. It’s ok. I’d like to, if nothing else, make all the words I have into first pass writing instead of notes. December will be a great time to make words, and maybe I won’t have my whole draft of book 3 done by end of year, but I shouldn’t be that far off either!

I had a month where I was just unenthused with photo editing. I pretty much took a month off and just posted spookywalk photos with crappy insta filters. My goal is the same as October, get through random spring stuff and Seattle before I leave for vacay, so I’m only one vacation behind!

I didn’t pick up my guitar. Ah well. Maybe next month. Also, I asked Joel to fix my/his/my electric since something is wrong with it. It’s one of those little speedbumps (I have two other guitars) keeping me from doing things.

So, November:

• Eat more veggies and fruit, no adding salt to salty things (and take my blood pressure consistently)
• Complete a 25k and increase distance on long walks and runs, maintain 3x week weights
• Get my notes into real words
• Edit some photos
• Clean out a few small things or help Joel clean out his bigger things.

Now that the weather is going to start cooperating, I feel like almost anything is possible!