Walks & Podcasts

Oh hi! I haven’t written in a few weeks, as you may have noticed, but it’s because I was working a contract. I’m a freelancer so I have to get the work while its hot! But here’s what’s happened:

• Week of Jan 16: Gained a pound – back up to 230lbs
• Week of Jan 23: Stayed the same, no ups, no downs
• Week of Jan 30: Down a pound - back to 229lbs.

Overall for the month of January, I’ve lost a total of 1 lbs! Not at all what I was going for, but I understand why. When I looked over my excel tracking sheet I saw that I didn’t track a lot of days (I just assumed I knew what I ate and we know what happens when you assume!) and I wasn’t going out for my walks regularly. I’d miss a day here or there when the weather wasn’t great or I was feeling overwhelmed. Neither of which are really an excuse – I have the right clothing for the weather, in fact we’ve barely had any snow and very few days below 0C (32F) this year. It doesn’t even feel like a real winter. And secondly, I know when I’m feeling down or overwhelmed that’s EXACTLY when I should go for a walk because I always feel better afterwards.

Speaking of walks, let’s chat about them. I love walking. I really, really do.

I started walking when the pandemic really hit back in mid-March 2020 and everyone was sent to work from home. I live in Ontario and we had some the most strictest and longest stay-at-home orders in the country. I was recuperating from having broken my ankle in October 2019 and was slowly getting back into running over January, February, and March. I was still running on a treadmill and only 1-2 mins at time between walking breaks for about 20-30 mins. My ankle would still swell afterwards and I’d need to rest and ice it. Once we had to stay home, I wasn’t convinced my ankle was strong enough to run on concrete so I decided I’d walk instead to make sure I was still strengthening and exercising it.

This is also when I discovered podcasts. Sure, I was super late to the game, but that’s ok. I normally listen to music when I work out or run, but I didn’t want to while walking, something about the tempo was just off for me. And now, almost 4 years later I still walk and listen to podcasts (almost) daily.

I always walk a minimum of 6000 steps. For no good reason other than that’s what my phone health app’s default is (Samsung Health if you’re wondering). Most times I do more – sometimes 7000, sometimes 10,000, never a round number though. I was hitting 10,000 much more often in the summer and nicer weather. In general I walk about 4.5km – 6km per day (I know there’s a few American’s reading this, so that’s about 2.7 – 3.7 miles). I’ve definitely found that when I don’t walk, I tend not to lose weight and when I walk more, I lose more easily. For now, at least until I’m under 200lbs I think I’ll keep walking rather than try to run again. I don’t want to damage my knees or ankles from too much weight so for now this will do.

As anyone who is into podcasts does, I now have to share with you my favourites – and ask you to tell me what you’re listening too! Leave your faves in the comments below.

Here’s what I’m listening to:

First up: MAINTENANCE PHASE. I love this one. It’s all about debunking wellness and weightlost trends/flash-in-the-pan diets. I highly recommend. So much so, that I even subscribe to their Patreon account. Which is great because they’ve taken a break from their regular schedule, but still post to the Patreon one.

I found MP because I used to listen to Michael Hobbes’ other podcast, YOU’RE WRONG ABOUT, all about debunking past events and our collective memories of how they happened. When Michael left in 2021, I lost interest – his approach is really what sells for me. However, it’s still good, but I highly recommend listening to the back catalogue from 2018 – 2021.

And because I’ll follow Michael Hobbes all over the internet I listen to his new one IF BOOKS COULD KILL where he and his co-host debunk airport best-sellers.

Also, love me some Jameela Jamil (from The Good Place) and her podcast I WEIGH – not just, or even at all, about weight, it’s about challenging social norms and expectations. If you’re a woman, I highly recommend.

Because I like my celebrity gossip, but with a touch of the morbid, TMZ’s LAST DAYS which delves into the last days and deaths of famous celebs. This one just came out last year and it’s fun and easy as long as you don’t mind talk of death.

Love me a bit of pop culture and history and so I listen to HISTORY OF THE 90s. I especially like podcasts led by tv and radio journalists as the podcasts are so well put together and they always have great voices. This is a Canadian podcast, so it does at times come from a Canadian POV.

I also listen to THE ONGOING HISTORY OF NEW MUSIC with Alan Cross. If you’re into alt-rock, alternative, rock music etc. You will LOVE this. I’ve been listening to Alan Cross on the radio since I was a teen and he is so well spoken and so researched. Also Canadian.

And, of course there’s some true crime in there as well. From a Calgary news reporter I listen to CRIME BEAT. This might be a bit much for some folks, as it’s really crime news reports and not a serialized story, but they they do tell you who did it in almost each episode and what the judicial outcome was.

Speaking of news crime reports, I’m currently listening to 13 HOURS which delves into 2020 Nova Scotia Massacre – Canada’s worst shooting spree in modern history where 22 people were killed. I like this so far because the reporter is really questioning the information given and the moves made by the RCMP that night (with good reason).

This one I finished, but I really like, in the true crime world: THE NO GOOD, TERRIBLY KIND, WONDERFUL LIVES AND TRAGIC DEATHS OF BARRY AND HONEY SHERMAN. It’s a 10-part series by a reporter delving into the 2017 murder of Toronto billionaire couple Barry and Honey Sherman which to this day remains UNSOLVED despite millions of dollars of reward money up for grabs! I will read and listen to all things about this case because I find it so fascinating.

Here are some honourable mentions:

SCAMFLUENCERS: about scammers and influencers. Just started, not sure if I’ll stick with it, but so far ok.

WHY WON’T YOU DATE ME with Nicole Byer: It was fun at first, but got a bit one-note for me eventually, but she has great comedian guests on each episode

ARTICLES OF INTEREST: History of clothing and what we wear. I haven’t listened to this as often, but do like it. Should listen to it more.

FED UP – 7-part series podcast about the F-Factor diet and the instagram influencer feud/court case etc. I stumbled on this as I didn’t know anything about this beforehand. It was a fun listen. Seriously the only ads that work on me while listening to podcasts are ads for other podcasts. That’s how I got to this one.

Wow, so thanks for reading if you got all the way to the end! This is what I’m listening too. If you’re into some awesome podcast(s) let me know in the comments below, always on the look out for new ones to add to my collection! If they’re Canadian and into debunking, history, pop culture or true crime – I’m probably even more interested to hear about them!

Til next week! Thanks for reading.

Weigh-in Week 178: So I ran my third 10K

Yuppers. I did it. Last Sunday. I also weighed-in last Tuesday. Let’s get that business out of the way shall we? Well it’s not good news. I was up 1.2lbs for a new weight of 162.1lbs and a total loss of 89.5lbs. Things are going from bad to worse it would seem. I’m not on track and to be honest the way this week has been going it’s not going to be a good one either. Le Sigh. I’m not sure how to turn this around just yet. I know I will, but I hope my head gets in the game sooner then later.

Let’s talk about this race of mine though. I ran it. Officially my third 10K race in three years. This year I ran it in 1:02:04. A whopping 6 seconds faster then my time last year! OOph! Not at all what I had hoped for. My goal is to get in under an hour. Wasn’t even close this year. I do wonder often about last year’s time as it was at a different 10K event. I wonder because my ipod said I’d only run 9.6km, not 10. This year it clocked it at 10km. So I wonder if perhaps I am in fact faster then I thought I was, but that last year’s time is inaccurate? Who knows. Maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better about the whole thing.

To be honest the race put me into a bit of a funk and I didn’t run for a week. I went out for my first run since the race yesterday afternoon. It was an ok run. The kind of run I have having not run for a week. I think I’ll sign up for the 10K again for next year so I can try to get the time I seek. I guess the real reason I’m disappointed in my time is that I know if I hadn’t gained back this 10lbs my time would be faster. This is a fact – the less you weigh the faster your times. So that’s at the root of it all. I’m disappointed with myself.

Well, at least I ran it and for all intents and purposes I ran it in less time than last year. Here are photos of the day:

 

Tons of people at the race. Between all the events (1K, 5K, 10K, Half, and Marathon) 32,000 people ran through the streets of Montreal on Sunday, September 22nd!

 

 

It was hard to find my friends in the crowd and it was so cold and rainy!

 

 

The finish line was at a park – a wet, rainy, muddy park!

 

 

But I did it and I got my medal!

 

 

The muddy shoes prove it all 😉

Weigh-In Week 157: Race Weekend!

Weighed-in yesterday and I was down 0.9lbs. Yahoo! New weight is 152.0lbs for a total loss of 99.6lbs. Happy for the loss, it could have been larger, but I ended up working out a lot this past weekend and I find those weeks I don’t lose as much – perhaps water retention.

This weekend we have incredible weather here and it was a glorious weekend for bootcamps in the park (led by a friend of mine) and my 5K race!! I’ve done this race now 3 years in a row and this is the first year we had gorgeous weather. It was wonderful and made for a great run!

Do you recall my goal of getting in under 30mins?? Well I did it! I ran the 5K in 27:50. WOOHOO!!! I am thrilled 🙂

And check out what the receptionist at WW gave me – three 5K charms! One for every year I’ve run the race. I can’t believe how far I’ve come over the last 3 years. Never before would I have thought I’d be this person. This person who runs races, who goes to bootcamp on the weekend, who craves to move and be active. I’m amazed. My life has changed so much. Sometimes I get caught up in how far I still have to go, how long it’s going to take me and I forget how far I’ve come.

Check out my morning at the race. I had such an amazing time!

Has summer arrived for you yet? Are you out and about these days?

Oh…did I tell you? 1000km!

That’s right! According to my Nike+ app I’ve run over 1000km since September 2011. Woohoo me!

I’ve run a bit more since I started the Couch to 5K back in January of 2011, but oh yeah here I am. These silly internet pics/awards totally do it for me. I love em all. I love my 5lb and bravo stickers at WW, all of it. I’m such a kid sometimes. Whatever, it gets me out the door am I right?

REASON FOR LOSING WEIGHT 4: For my body to be a machine

So I’ve mentioned that I work in theatre, and so I work with actors. The type of work I do and that I enjoy seeing falls under the moniker “physical theatre”. It is not dance, but rather theatre where the body takes precedence over the words and text. As I was working on shows I realized that I felt hypocritical to ask my actors to do things with their body that I couldn’t even begin to attempt.

Now, yes, they are trained differently than I am and use their bodies as their primary mode of communication on stage, but still. It just didn’t sit right with me. When I was overweight I tried to take a 2-day workshop and after the first day that I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t comfortable playing with my body and using it. Now I don’t have to do this on stage in front of an audience, but I thought I should be able to do it in the comfortable setting of a workshop. It felt horrible. I felt like a hypocrite. By no means should a director necessarily be able to do what an actor does, I felt like I couldn’t even come close. Like I didn’t know what was possible for the human body to do or what its limits were because my own limits were so much more due to my size.

And I have changed that – I feel like I can take a workshop now and move and not be afraid to move. I don’t get out of breath as easily and I can actually do the movements – perhaps not as well as an actor can, but I no longer feel like a hypocrite.

That is what I mean by my body being a machine – human bodies are remarkable things and when our muscles and bones etc all work together it can create beautiful pictures. I wanted my body to be able to move and to respond. I wanted a body that I could work and with work it could do new and exciting things. I want a body that is not encumbered by fat, but rather can be used to its full potential. I think that’s why I like training for my races so much. After each training session or race I can do new and wonderful things with my body. My body changes, gets better, faster, more limber. My body does what I believe it was meant to do – it moves.

I Did It! A10K Personal Best

Woohoo! Ran the race this morning with a time of 1:02:10! That’s 5m36s FASTER than my time last year. I am thrilled, I may have been 10 minutes over the average for the race, I may have come in 958th place out of 1101, but it’s a personal best for me and that makes me proud. I can’t even begin to imagine where I was 2 years ago. I could barely walk up that mountain to get home let alone run longer than a block without wheezing. But here I am, I’ve run my fourth race, my second 10K.  Never would I have imagined myself here 2 years ago.

I won’t lie, this was a tough race – mentally speaking. 2K in and I wanted to quit. I don’t know why. It just seemed so difficult to go on. I think I was scared. Scared I wouldn’t beat my time from last year and thus feel like a failure. I didn’t even publicize or promote this race on facebook as I had in the past. I was worried I has set myself up for failure. How silly is that? Even if I didn’t beat my time – I still RAN 10 KILOMETERS!!! I kept myself going, I never slowed to a walk, I kept going. I figured, so what if it takes me longer. I will not give up. I will not quit.  Quitting is not an option because once you do it the first time, the second time becomes much easier.

I found this image on another blog and it really hit home to me. It’s takes a while to realize this, but it is oh so true:

“It’s very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.” – George Sheehan

Also – did you see my bib number in the post below – 1492. Um, anyone else have  “In 1492, Columbus sailed the  ocean blue…” tune going through their heads?? If not, you’re welcome for it now! :p

An Autumnal 10K Race

Tomorrow (or today if you’re reading this on Sunday) is my second ever 10k race. Eek! I think I’m ready for it. I’m more concerned about the cool weather we’ve been having. It’s forecasted to be only 5 degrees with light rain. I don’t mind running in the rain, but to be honest I don’t really like racing in the rain.

I picked up my bib this afternoon so it’s official. No getting out of it!

The race route is 3 laps around a park in the city. Now, I get bored when running laps so I’m counting on the adrenaline to take through this. I’m hoping to beat my time from last year- 1:07:46 and my secret hope to get under 1:05. This is our route:

Alright, this was short and sweet – off I go to get a good night’s sleep. Despite the cool weather and the laps, I actually am looking forward to it. I’ll be sure to tweet my time as I won’t be able to get to write a post until late Sunday night.   Hope you’re all having a great weekend so far! Share your running stories, I love reading them 🙂

 

The Power of the Mind

So, Wednesday morning I wake up with a pain in the side of the right foot. It kinda hurts to walk, but I suck it up and get myself to work. My commute to work is about a 20-25min walk.  It’s a bit painful during the day, but nothing extreme. Wednesday night’s I often go to meet up with friends and I walk to their neighbourhood – a good 7km walk that takes me about 1h15. It’s a nice way to unwind after work and usually the weather is nice (yes, I even do the walk in bad weather/rain/humidity/winter).  My foot hurts, but again, nothing extreme. The pain goes away over the night, but when I get home it comes back.

Thursday I wake up and the pain is worse. So bad, that walking really hurts in the morning and I start to compensate by putting the weight on the balls of my fee. I’m working from and so I start googling…oh no.  Well, a few google searches and running forums later I have a fear that I might have a stress fracture. It all fits – it came on suddenly, I’d run a lot more in the last little while (a 5K on Saturday, 7K on Sunday, and 6K on Tuesday) – and I don’t usually run each day, and it hurt to walk and even a bit just at rest. I went for a slow 5K run on Thursday to test it out. Apparently stress fractures get worse over a run, and it hurts to hop on your foot. Well the run went okay… I could feel my foot (I’ve been terribly aware of my foot for the last day and half), but it got a bit better during the run and I could hop on my foot – it hurt, but it wasn’t impossible.

Well then the pain got worse and my fears got worse…what it if this was a stress fracture. Oh NO! What was I going to do – that would mean about 6-8 weeks of no running, and possibly no/very little walking. I live in a major city and walking is my primary mode of transportation. That means I can’t run my 10K in mid-October (oh, wait have I mentioned that? Yes? No? Okay, I’ll elaborate in my next post.) That means I can’t run in the fall, the BEST time of year to run.  That means I can’t be as active as usually am…what about my weight? My eating hasn’t been great lately and I fear a lack in activity will cause more gains. EEEKK! Yes, my mind start to race and spiral out of control and the pain gets worse. So badly that by Thursday night I can barely walk.  Here is where my pain was localized:

Image Source

I decide I have to get myself to a doctor asap. Friday morning I walk up and head out to the clinic. My 10minute walk to the subway is awful, I’m in pain, unhappy, and fearful. I’m so scared what the doctor will say, well an hour later I get my diagnosis…NOT A STRESS FRACTURE!! Woohoo!!! He says I’ve probably just strained my foot muscle from over use. Phew. I’m so relieved. He says to stay off it for a while and ice it. So I decide to forego my long run this weekend (the plan was to try a 9K) and give it some time to heal properly.

I get to work for an afternoon filled with meetings and as the day progresses  I realize something…my foot feels better. And not just a bit better, but a lot better. My the evening I’m feel strong enough to get the gym for a strength training session. This morning I wake up and my foot is feeling SO much better. I can walk around the house with relative ease and will pop out for some grocery shopping.

What has this 3 day excitement taught me? Well, for starters I am amazed at the power of the mind. When I had convinced myself that I might have a stress fracture my pain got so much worse and the minute my fears were alleviated I started feeling better.

Truly, to be so aware of how my mindset affected me physically was a big wake-up call. I had to wonder – has my almost year-long plateau been due to my negative thoughts? I have never been at a healthy weight, not even as a child. Am I afraid? Do I keep sabotaging my efforts with my mindset? Do I not think I can do it? Do I not think I deserve to be at a healthy weight? Do I think it’s inevitable that I’ll regain this weight?

Well these are questions to ponder aren’t they…just why do I think I can’t get down to a healthy weight? Really, there’s no reason. No one is force-feeding me, I am responsible for my actions and my meals. So why am I creating obstacles that weren’t there before (like the late-night snacking?) I need to regroup and reset my thinking. I need to get my mind back on track, think positively about what I have accomplished and that if I can lose 1 lb, I can lose 20. It won’t happen over night (clearly!) but it will happen. I think sometimes we (I?) underestimate the power of our minds when it comes to weight loss – and I’m not talking about willpower, but just the idea of positive thinking. It sounds hokey, but it’s so important isn’t it? A good lesson learned.

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Running in Central Park

I did it! I said I wouldn’t, but I did it and went for a run in Central Park. It’s very humid here today so I just did a 5k run. Did you know they have a map of all the distances? How cool is that! I followed the purple and yellow lines starting at 66th street on the West Side. But on the way back I was worried I’d missed the exit and actually ended up out at 7th and Central Park South so I followed along the outer edge back. It was a good run and I’m so happy I did it all the way without stopping given the heat and humidity. It was a thousand times better than running that same route last year. Wow, what a difference a year makes! 🙂

You can download the pdf of the map for free right here:  http://www.centralpark.com/usr/maps/CentralParkRunningMap.pdf

Went for a Run!

Quick update – staff meeting pushed back until 10am today so at 7:30 I grabbed my shoes and out the door for a half-hour run! Yay me!

In Calgary it stays light out until almost 11pm! This is messing with me. Check this out, I took it at 10pm last night!