Tag Archives: weight

#50by50ish #50 – Lose weight – Part 15, my digital resources

The PolyBlog
February 8 2019

While I should be doing a full update for measurements and everything, I’m really not feeling it at the moment. And so I didn’t do an update on Wednesday. But someone asked after a previous post if I was going to post about what I was using for resources — websites, apps, etc. — and I wrote this up last weekend, so if anything might jive for others, I might as well share.

Apps

I tried out a bunch of apps, and very few resonated with me. I tried weight trackers, nutrition ones, stuff about exercise, and a raft of others. In the end, I’m only happy with four of them, and right now, I’m almost down to using only two for two specific elements.

The first area is almost unrelated — I like to jumpstart my brain with some puzzles in the morning. Not “physical health”, more “cognitive health”, I guess. I subscribe to an app called PUZZLE PAGE, and each day it gives me 7 new puzzles or so. Basic crosswords (more kris-kros puzzles than traditional crossword), sudoko, etc., plus some other ones for pattern recognitions, quote falls, etc. It has an option to sync across devices through cloud saving, but I find it too hard to play comfortable on a phone screen. I also have Quote Slide which I have been playing for years, as well as Picture Cross, Puzzledom, Ludo King, Rikudo, and, for a long time, Family Zoo. But mostly I only use those for variety now. Puzzle Page is my mental app of the day. I’ve tried Lumosity, a few others, but this one suits my interests better. All of them are available on iOS, I think, although I was doing them on Android.

In terms of nutrition, I bopped between two apps. The gold standard for most people is the app MYFITNESSPAL by Under Armour and I upgraded to Premium for the first month trial. You enter what you eat and drink, and it tells you the nutritional count for the day. 

Samsung has a similar app called S-Health. And since I was a pure Android user when I started the journey, I tried it out. Unfortunately, it only works on the Samsung phones, NOT my Samsung tablet, and I do tend to use the tablet more than my phone.

Both of the apps come with extensive lookup databases, and with the similarities between the two, I think they must have pulled from the same database at some point. You can also add in fitness times, exercise types, etc., and it will give you your calorie count for the day. There are also blogs that are linked or links to exercise programs. Both aim to be ALL-IN-ONE. But for me, the main point was education…I needed to get a better understanding of the food choices I was making, while keeping it relatively simple. I kept track for a couple of weeks and it really helped. I did not renew for MyFitnessPal at the end of the month, wasn’t needing it as much by then, and I always had S-Health for backup (at least at the time, I’ve now switched to iOS for my phone).

My dietician has me on a simplified diet and as long as I remain within that, I don’t need to access the nutritional info of every piece of food going by. For me, most of the challenge was more about certain food choices (too many carbs, not enough veggies and fruit) and when I was eating (skipping breakfast, messed up schedules). I changed that, and my weight adjusted. From time to time, I look something up, but I’m not in it daily. I might decide to go back into it at some point to get me “restarted” / refocused, but it isn’t my “go to” app. And because of that, I don’t need the premium subscription. Both “basic” versions work just fine.

The fourth app runs on my Android tablet and it is a pretty basic weight tracker. You can do it in the other apps, but I wanted something just simple and easy to use. You put in your starting date and weight, your goal weight and ending date, and it will chart your plan to get there on a linear scale. The other apps do that too, but they also will add in a bunch of caloric info that I didn’t want cluttering up the interface. By contrast though, the weight tracker I use (MONITOR YOUR WEIGHT) is not particularly health-friendly — if you put in that you want to lose 10 pounds a week for 10 weeks, it will dutifully chart it out for you. 100 pounds in a week? Here’s your chart. Neither of those would be healthy plans, but that is not what the app is for — it’s just charting your info for you, it doesn’t check to see if you’re an idiot or simply unrealistic. The other apps do — both will limit your weight loss to under 2 pounds per week…they simply won’t chart anything else. And usually won’t let you set a date and goal in any other way.

The app I use ignores all that, it’s really just a graphing program, and will let you enter your weight each day or at whatever frequency you choose to enter, and plot it against the goal. It shows you the raw data (plot points), a green line to show your “goal” (i.e. straight line from starting point to your goal), and an orange line to project your likely weight loss path at your current rate of progress (extrapolating from your entries). If you want to export the data to Excel, you can (simple CSV format). Pretty simple with few bells and whistles.

I looked at some of the exercise apps, and I may want something at some point for tracking, but most of my stuff is so individualized, the big “generic” apps don’t really fit my program very well. I find myself tracking things more in Excel than anything else. I have a bunch of exercise videos and I’ll blog about those in the future once I get the basement set up properly.

Websites / Email Feeds / Blogs

I also initially signed up for some good websites. The info was good in the first few weeks particularly, keeping my mind focused on my learning, but over time, some of the articles started to seem more like click-bait headlines / pop articles than useful advice.

Everyday Health has a number of email feeds to choose from and one is called Diet and Nutrition. Some recent articles include:

  • 9 steps to lower your BMI (basically about accuracy, scales, and having a plan);
  • 7 foods that spike blood sugar (white rice, white bread, sodas and other sweet drinks, red meat, fast food, packaged foods, whole milk…duh!)
  • 9 Foods to avoid if you have Type 2 diabetes
  • 7 Easy Breakfast Ideas for Type 2 diabetes

Some diet tips, some recipe suggestions, etc. But pretty basic. After a week or two, they seem rather juvenile even. And after a month, it’s the rare article that contains something useful.

Another feed is called Living with Diabetes and contains similar articles:

  • Diabetes Breakfast Mistakes
  • Is Intermittent Fasting Safe for People With Diabetes?
  • What is Hyperglycemia? How to Prevent, Detect, and Treat High Blood Sugar
  • 9 Healthy Fruits for People With Type 2 Diabetes

Some are still pretty basic, but I find it is at least a slightly higher ratio of useful information in there.

A third feed that I chose was Men’s Health with articles like 7 Best Foods for Men Over 50. The rest of the topics are pretty varied, and while there are some useful things hidden in there, there are a LOT of articles that I’m not interested in (vacation spam, problems with urinary infections, how to control a Herpes outbreak, etc.). Heck, even Readers Digest Read-up has some interesting articles in it (The Most Popular Weight-Loss Products on Amazon!).

But the better ones are pure health-related like Healthline: Diabetes. The content might not be much better than the Everyday Health, but the ratio of soft articles seems lower (Is It Safe to Donate Blood If You Live with Diabetes?; Can 6 Weeks of CrossFit Help Ease Diabetes Symptoms?).

I don’t know if there are any startling “nuggets” in there, but it’s what I have been using. Doing this article helped me to realize that the ratio of useful info to pablum on some of them was so low that I unsubscribed. If I find anything else out there that works, I’ll share.

One extra thing

As an aside, I also have a Fitbit HR. I have had it for some time, and I love the premise of it. But four things are holding me back from fully embracing it, each individually minor. First, my knees are giving me problems. So I’m not capable of 10K steps right now. That shouldn’t stop me, I can still do whatever I can do, right, and track it.

Second, I find it very uncomfortable to wear, partly related to all watches. When I type, I like to keep my desk a bit higher, and let my wrists rest on the desk. It works for me, no carpal tunnel problems, etc., but if I rest on the desk, the watchband starts to dig into my wrist. And then I take it off to type, which I do at my desk all day long, forget to put it back on, which means it doesn’t record all the other steps I take when I’m not wearing it.

Third, the charger for it is not a simple mini-USB, it has it’s own VERY short cord (about six inches) and a weird shaped dongle. I usually only charge connected to my computer at home (I’d charge it at work but we’re not allowed to plug USB devices in, even to charge). I carry the cord, but then I forget to charge, as opposed to other devices that naturally line up when I finish for the day. It charges with a slightly different setup, and that extra “step” means it ends up running out of power before I remember to keep it up to date.

Fourth, there is a problem with this model of Fitbit that is endemic to the series. There is no separate “pairing” option on it to turn on Bluetooth and you need to use BT to synch to your mobile device. When I synch, even if I did a synch yesterday, it takes FOREVER to synch properly. Sometimes it doesn’t connect and it takes awhile to do that; other times it just seems to pause half-way through; other times it just takes forever to transfer every single bit of data. I wouldn’t particularly care except that if the power has run down, synching is the ONLY way to set the time. A couple of weeks ago, it took THIRTY MINUTES. Searching the internet have turned up tons of anecdotal tips and tricks, including starting a synch, wait a minute, and then completely reboot the phone and do it again. By rebooting, it guarantees that the BT link is severed on both ends (the sending Fitbit and the receiving phone) whereas simply disconnecting the BT setting leaves the Fitbit somehow lock-blocked. Some people just use the health apps on their phones and use that to track by estimate how many steps they take, but evaluations of these techniques show wide variations with reality.

Like I said, I love the premise of it all…nutrition and weight apps, e-feeds to keep me focused in a larger community, and an e-device to gather health data. And some people have gone that route whole-hog with great happiness. While I like tech, I only use it when it works well and helps. I haven’t found that sweet spot.

The only real tech solution that is working GREAT for me is a digital diary of sorts. In other words, this blog!

#50by50ish #50 – Lose weight – Part 14, a tiny spark

The PolyBlog
January 30 2019

Last week’s post was brought to you by Debbie Downer. I confess that I’m really “not feeling it”, the weight loss journey. I’m holding steady a few pounds above what I was earlier, which is a miracle considering how much I’m screwing up my diet regularly. I’m kind of giving myself a pass for the month of January, with a view to going hard again in February. But as part of my coping mechanisms, I’m trying to latch on to brightness wherever I can find it in the journey. And I didn’t really talk about a spark I felt back in December.

I had a good day. Actually, I had a great day. That doesn`t sound like much, does it? Sure, I mean, great days are good, but so what? Because it had been so long since I had a day like that, I think that I’d forgotten they exist. It was like my “new normal” over the last ten years defined good days within a narrower and narrower set of parameters.

For context, the “great day” was a normal everyday day, nothing special. I woke up, had a shower, ate some breakfast, did some basic things, and went to take something out to the garage. As I stepped out of the house, and into the garage, I suddenly became acutely aware of my body. It was like my brain was trying to tell me something, and suddenly I decided to listen. My brain was saying, “Yo’ dude, have you noticed how you’re feeling right NOW?”.

I was energized. I had been listening to music, I was bopping along, I felt pumped. I felt, well, healthy. And most of the day, I kept thinking, “What is THIS? And how do I get this feeling EVERY day?”. 

It felt new.

As I thought about it, I harkened back to an earlier post about various indicators — on-scale and off-scale ones. Lots of people had ideas of what else to suggest, and most of them fell into psycho/socio measures that tend to be very subjective. One friend in particular noted that she has indicators that lead themselves, in the most simplistic version, to whether you`re having good days or bad, what pain thresholds look like, etc. But they didn’t seem to “fit” with my journey, or my experiences in the past. I set them aside in favour of some future work (i.e., this post) about well-being. I wasn’t sure I would find anything that fit well with me, personally, but I wanted to check it out further. 

I confess that I had looked at well-being indicators once before, and was underwhelmed. Perhaps it’s my analytical side, perhaps it’s the performance measurement work I’ve done in my career, or perhaps it’s the approach I take to goal-setting in general, but I found that most of the indicators were either population level (i.e. not suited to the individual), too subjective (how do you feel today? are you satisfied with your life?), or too specific to unique populations (i.e., for chronic pain sufferers, what is your pain level today? Can you walk 10m? 20m?). Most of them didn’t seem to apply to me.

For example, I wasn’t in physical discomfort, pain, etc. I had no injury, I was just fat. Mental health is always an open question for me, sometimes jokingly and sometimes literally, but I wasn’t in any distress. In fact, that was one of the weird elements up until I hit 300 pounds — sometimes it was hard to see the direct impact on me. I coped pretty well.

Which when I write it out — “coping” — it seems obvious that there is impact. Likely measureable impact. Yet the dampening down of my energies and general feelings of health have been so long and gradual that I have equated much of it with simply growing older. No “good days” vs. “bad days”, just “what was”. Minor ripples and variations within a narrower range. Never too high, never too low. The “new normal” became simply my “normal”.

But like I said, then I had a good day. And I experienced again what that can feel like. My energy was up, I felt physically fitter within my current body frame, and my mood was positive. Oh, sure, it was gone the next day. Yet a couple of weeks later, I had a half day where I felt the same initial energy and mood bump, without the physical health sensation, and I thought, “Hmm, maybe I *should* be tracking this.”

More research on well-being

So I went back to some of my old bookmarks, did some additional searching and found some basic stuff online, even some more pop psych articles. Most were crap. Even ones where there was any rigour to them, they often were only for population level indicators rather than for individuals. Or just ones that didn’t apply to me. Until I found the Personal Wellbeing Index for Adults (PWI-A) from the “International Wellbeing Group” run out of (I think) Australia. As I read the file linked above, I found myself nodding YES! in a few places.

For example, they noted that one of the challenges with Quality of Life measurements is that you have to first define QoL — and if you change the definition, the measurements are either relevant or not. There’s no consensus on the definition, and thus little consensus on measurement, with one estimate being over 1200 indices around the world all with different elements. Yes, been there, seen that.

It then noted that even where there was a bit of consensus, it often was extremely narrowly focused, such as on a specific age demographic, medical condition or disability. In other words, if you defined the group as those with a muscular disease with motor control impairment, a bunch of your indicators are going to be about how they experience their day from that lens (or at least in part from that lens). Like the chronic pain example I used above.

In part, this was the same reaction I had to my friend’s initial advice — absence of pain wasn’t really relevant to me. I didn’t see how I could simply call it “absence of fattiness” instead.

What I wasn’t expecting in the article was that they faced head on the issue of objective and subjective measures of personal well-being. And the rigour with which they approached the question of “which domains to measure?”. They wanted no overlap between categories to prevent the possibility of something being influenced by the other indicators OR merely being a contributor, not a stand-alone area.

In fact, it was one of the areas that led them away from single-item/dimension constructs…if you defined QoL from a single lens/theme, and then decided it was made up of elements A, B and C, those elements are both contributory and definitional — you can only understand A within the control of the QoL definition, as opposed to understanding A as a standalone area on its own.

For me, it was some of the limitations I saw with some of the 1200+ constructs…circular definitions and inconsistent rigour in the elements, meaning that if one piece fell, the whole construct failed. I generally prefer models that can be seen as complementary and potentially capable of compensation rather than hardcore integration.

The scale chose seven domains that includes opportunities for both objective and subjective outcomes:

  1. Standard of living
  2. Personal health
  3. Achieving in life
  4. Personal relationships
  5. Personal safety
  6. Community-connectedness
  7. Future security

It also includes a general question about overall satisfaction with one’s life, but that isn’t included in the scale (not a unique domain). The ninth question is one on which the group couldn’t achieve consensus — whether or not to include a spiritual or religion domain.

Each of the questions is measured on a 10-point scale where 0 is not satisfied at all and 10 is tickled pink (okay, actually it is completely satisfied). So I did the test (Taking a Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) test) and it was interesting, but it didn’t really get me to the point of having some good indicators. I am going to ignore the Standard of Living, Current Achievements, Personal Relationships, Safety, Community, Future Security, Spirituality / Religion, and Overall Life questions, but I am going to incorporate one of them in two forms:

  • How satisfied am I with my health?
  • How satisfied am I with my current options and approach?

Embracing my inner researcher

Okay, I liked that first one, and it was encouraging enough that I went a little research-crazy. Which means, for the first time ever, I have a blog post with an Appendix! I’m sharing my notes and links at the bottom to what I found.

So having read all those links, I find myself at a bit of a cross-roads. I know which parts are directly relevant to my weight journey (marked in yellow in the appendix):

  • Global:
    • current life satisfaction, overall sense of WB
  • Physical:
    • breathing, dexterity, discomfort, elimination, energy levels, fatigue, fitness, general health, illness, mobility, nutritional balance, pain, physical activity, sleep, stress, usual activities, self-reported health status
  • Mental:
    • anxiety, acceptance, mood, emotional reactions, inner balance, intellectual wellness/mental alertness, motivation, optimism, relaxation, self-esteem, self-care, self-control, positive affect, optimism, prevalence of dementia
  • Activities / functioning
    • ability or time to do interests/hobbies, recreation, sex, work/life balance, outdoor environment
  • Social WB
    • family, friendships, home life, lonely dissatisfaction, parenting, partner relations, social supports, volunteering, arts & culture

But the cross-roads is related to the fact that I really hate doing the same work twice. And if I like these WB indicators enough to incorporate for my health journey, perhaps I should consider them more broadly. Like a Personal Well Being Index that I review likely annually that also takes into account all those other factors that don’t really apply to my physical health journey, more the broader holistic “me 2.0”. It’s the same challenge that the first article had — ensuring that the domains are discrete, and I see a bunch of the ones above as being “part” of a larger discrete category, it’s just those other parts aren’t as relevant.

I don’t know who I’m fooling, my decision is already made. I need to make a quick and dirty PolyWogg Well-being Index that goes beyond the basics. Maybe I can tie it to my favorite Blue / Red / Yellow / Green model.

All because of that one little spark.

APPENDIX: Notes on well-being indicators

#50by50ish #50 – Lose weight – Part 13, hitting a wall

The PolyBlog
January 23 2019

Earlier, I had posted about getting through the holidays and my leave, and not only did I not get completely derailed on my goal, but I also even managed to knock a couple more pounds off and break my plateau. But since then? I have hit a wall. Actually twice. The first time was significant, but merely figurative; the second time was slightly less significant, but literal.

The figurative wall

Winter tends to hit me hard, with a strong desire to just hibernate until Spring, and I don’t have a lot of coping mechanisms that are that effective at beating that lull. I’ve tried lots of things, most didn’t help.

Trips to warmer Southern climates DO help, but we tend to do those every couple of years, not every year. Too many other demands on our budget. It also sometimes backfires, particularly if the timing doesn’t coincide well with the winter blasts — if I go too early, the post-vacation blasts can run pretty long; if I go too late, I’m often too run-down before I go. 

Another coping technique I have is that I like to embrace the idea of PolySpring — my so-called “light at the end of the tunnel” by which I’m near-guaranteed likely to have no more lasting snow. The end of the hibernation and a good date to aim for — if I can hold on until then, my expectations don’t get too high earlier, and I can also remain on a relatively even keel.

Lots of advice swirls out there in the ether about how to cope with the winter blues, including embracing the outdoor life. Some of that I like the sounds of, most of it I don’t, and what I have tried left me with those two as the main techniques that help. I prefer spring and fall over a too-cold winter or a too-hot summer. And with my weight being what it has been, some possible outings have not been in the cards (I’m looking at you, Mr. x-country skiing). I know, I know, a self-fulfilling prophecy and an excuse more than an explanation.

However, in addition to the two above, one thing that has frequently worked for me has been to do a “January 1st reset” of my life each year. I would drag out my to do lists and bucket lists, and personal planning guides, and wrestle with them throughout January to update or set goals for myself. Planning, brainstorming, blogging, trying out new personal storylines on myself, coming up with new ideas on how to approach the coming year. Sometimes reading the latest and greatest in new approaches to personal planning. A chance to jump into a rabbit-hole and emerge on the other side of the winter field with a concrete plan to move forward. 

But, this year, I don’t have any goals to wrestle with mentally to distract myself. I had decided to have no other goals, just the single one that is now sitting there mocking me. My overall momentum has dropped to zero. The problem is that I’m stalled. Kind of like climbing a hill with a 4×4 and getting stopped part way up. You can’t just give it more gas, you almost have no other choice but to back down a ways and then take another run at it.  I have seriously given thought to just going for ice cream and starting “over”. Count it as a broken goal and then recommit again, doubling down.

I may be stuck on the hill, just giving it gas, but what has been worse this week is that I’m starting to slide backwards. I’ve got the brakes on to slow my descent, but I’ve started staying up late again, watching TV. Buying my lunch at work, and while slightly better choices than before, still not as good as a home made lunch, with my snacks set for the week. My motivation is almost zero. And my weight has crept back up five pounds. Not horrendous, I know, but when I’m focused on getting the weight to go down, seeing it go back to my plateau weight is not encouraging. And while I had been doing really well on my foods, I’m now HUNGRY way more often.

I tried with Andrea to vary our menu last week, testing some new recipes, but we over-programmed and I wasn’t looking forward to the various ones as much as I might have been with fewer new choices. Plus I feel like I’ve been fighting a bug the last two weeks. It could just be my body adapting to new drugs, hard to tell. And some of it is just my brain sabotaging my efforts. The hill metaphor is just that, a metaphor. It doesn’t quite hold for a goal like this, and I have no intention of giving in. 

But then, I almost had a catastrophe happen.

The literal wall

Jacob had a course at Nepean SportsPlex on Sunday morning, and we were running a bit late. We were just about to head out, Andrea and Jacob were already in the car when I realized that Jacob didn’t have his sunglasses with him. It wasn’t that bright out, he wasn’t planning to take them, but when I asked him if he wanted his sunglasses or not, he paused and then agreed he did want them after all. No problem, I could get them.

They were in his bag near the front door, and I sat down sideways on the steps in our entry way while I looked through his bag. I found them, and when I went to get up, I sort of rotated back straight, leaned forward and tried to rise.

Except my weight wasn’t entirely over my feet when I did it. And my feet weren’t on the carpet; instead, the carpet was pulled back a bit and my slightly-wet boots were on slightly-wet tile.

My feet went out from under me to the left, and I fell to the right.

Not far, not kersplat. I more “fell over” than “fell”, basically from a half-standing, half-sitting position. And I didn’t go all the way down. I couldn’t, you see.

There’s a wall there. As I fell, I stuck my forearm out to stop my descent, and caught the edge of the wall about an inch or two in from my elbow. 315 pounds falling on a single wedge of wall on a single point on my forearm.

I thought I had broken it. It hurt so bad, so instantly, and the whole thing went almost dead from that point downward, I was sure it was broken. I couldn’t even move it for a good minute. It still hurt like crazy, and I managed to get my feet under me properly and lean way forward before standing and going out to the car. When I went to put the key in the ignition, I had a lot of trouble moving my arm forward to do it. I eventually had to lean my body forward too, I couldn’t raise my arm that far. As I drove, I stretched my arm out as far as I could to get it moving again, and slowly got it moving again over the next 30 minutes. 

One hour and an ice pack later and I was good to go. I figured it would bruise, but it didn’t, not really. Sure, there’s a small bruise and a little scrape, but other than that, there’s just missing paint from the edge of the wall and some residue on my coat arm. 

But it scared the crap out of me. My most immediate fear is not about my heart or weight or BP or any of that — it’s falling on my knees and doing major damage. I have gone skating a few times in the last couple of years, and basically set aside the fear. Yet after this incident, I won’t chance it. I barely fell and came close to doing major damage to my arm. It’s still sore three days later, and if I rest the arm the wrong way on the armrest in the car or at my desk, or even just on the desk, I feel it almost instantly. If I had gone down on my knee? Hell, it hurts just KNEELING on a good day. I can’t take the risk until I get the weight down.

And of course, my brain is attacking me pretty hard. Clumsy, fat stupid PoS is basically the message it is sending, which is not doing much for my mood. Add in a rough transition from six weeks off back into work, and I’m not having a good month.

A figurative wall and a literal one. Both taking me out.

On a good day, I could turn that anger into something resembling forward motion, driving me forward. I know the only way out is through, but my brain isn’t listening at the moment. It wants to give up, but that’s not an option.

I’ve decided that I need to set a non-health goal or two to distract me from time to time and let me feel a sense of momentum when the other momentum slows. I thought the Reading Challenge might be enough, but it wasn’t. So maybe I can do a bit of mini-planning without going full-rabbit hole. See if that helps.

In the meantime, I’m mostly just pissed at myself. Almost enough to hit a wall, if I hadn’t done that twice already.

The only way out is through. The only way out is through. The only way out is through. The only way out is through…Breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth. 

Taking a Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) test

The PolyBlog
January 17 2019

In my posts about weight loss, and a future one about non-scale indicators, I came across a really interesting Personal Wellbeing Index for adults. It has academic rigour, solid citations, decent logic, and relatively discrete categories for themes/areas. I don’t know whether or not it holds water for my weightloss journey, that is a totally-separate question, but I wanted to try it out, so let’s see how it goes.

1. How satisfied am I with my standard of living?

On the test’s ten-point scale, I’d say probably an 8 or 9. I’ll go with 8 for now.

But, of course, as an introverted analyst who normally hates subjective questions, I want to quibble with the question. What does “satisfied” mean? What is included in a SoL? What does it mean to evaluate that when I’m married with someone with a strong second income? Is “satisfied” the right term to measure “quality” or am I just going to see how “satisfied” I am with my life? Is it “singularly happy” or “comparatively happy”?

None of that really matters, as I’m only comparing it to myself. As long as I’m consistent with how I interpret it *for me*, the rest falls away. Yet, for me, a strong element is comparative to that of my parents or between Jacob and myself at the same age. Would I like to be more financially secure (other questions later) or have a slightly more viable opportunity to give Jacob more vacations and travel? Sure. But those are more luxuries to get me to 10, or more accurately, probably into a whole other scale past “10”.

2. How satisfied am I with my health?

On a ten-point scale, I’m going to go with a 6.

I could go lower with a weight-biased view of my health that might make me rate it as a 0 right now. Except I also know that things could be a whole lot worse. The problems I have are relatively fixable, and so for the test, I would say “satisfied with my actual health” might be less accurate than “satisfied with my current options and approach”. 

3. How satisfied am I with what I am currently achieving in life?

On a ten-point scale, I’m going to go with a 7.

This one was hard. As an analytical introvert, I am big on goals, goal-setting, goal-tracking, and generally leading a well-examined life. It also means that I am regularly focused on the “next big thing” on my list. But I’m doing pretty well overall within the parameters I have. I’m not KILLING IT at work, as a father, as a husband, as a community member, as a person. But I`ve got one big goal to focus on at the exclusion of almost everything else in my to do list, and I’m doing it. That’s pretty significant. I could do it a lot better, sure, I could be doing more in more areas, but I’m making progress, and that’s good enough for now.

4. How satisfied am I with my personal relationships?

On a ten-point scale, I’ll go with a 6.

I’d say most of the time it’s a 7, but I’m a bit more isolated right now. Some of that is winter, some of that is focusing on my weight, some of that is being a hermit. I’d like to feel closer to my wife, have more quality conversations and activities with my son, do more with a few close friends. But I`m certainly doing better than okay (5), and as I said, it’s normally higher.

5. How satisfied am I with how safe I feel?

If I interpret this as physical safety and/or economic safety, I’m going to rank it pretty high. Probably a 9 or 10 most of the time. Some trips might compromise the physical safety, and there are always unforeseen economic pitfalls that can hit at any time. A bigger challenge would be health safety, and while I would say it would have pulled me down to a 7 or 8 a few months ago, I feel like most things are under control. So I`ll go with 9.

6. How satisfied am I with feeling part of my community?

As I said under #4, I’ve made some choices in the last three years that have led to a bit more isolation in some areas (friends, outings with guys) and more interaction in others (astronomy). It makes me feel untethered at times. So while I’m not sure a good way to score this element, I’m going to go simply, trust my gut, and say I’m at 3.

7. How satisfied am I with my future security?

I don’t feel there is a lot of difference right now between this question and #5 for me, but as there are a few unknowns about retirement, I’ll downgrade it to an 8.

There are TWO OPTIONAL QUESTIONS in the test, and the first is quite challenging.

8. How satisfied are you with your spirituality or religion?

Ignoring the religion side for me as it is not particularly relevant (and the test recommends removing it), I am however interested in questions of gratitude, mindfulness, meditation, etc. All three are lacking in me, and I want to expand them, so I’m going to give it a 2. But I’m going to keep it in my list, with the redirected focus.

9. How satisfied are you with your life as a whole?

This one is not really part of the formal test, more of a relative observation question. After all, the previous 8 assessed different aspects, and if you treated them as equal, you could simply average them (as your brain often does when asked a question like this). 

My individual scores/ratings were 8, 6, 7, 6, 9, 3, 8, and 2. The average of those would be 6.1 or so. But if I answer the overall question, I have to say I would put myself closer to 7 or an 8. Sure, some parts could be better, but in general, I have a pretty good life.

So my overall assessment is greater than the sum of its parts, or put perhaps more mathematically, my strong ratings for standard of living, safety and security tend to raise my numbers; by contrast, my community and spirituality lower me quite a bit.

On a formal assessment, the numbers go up by average; on an informal assessment, particularly if I was just gauging mood, those feelings of isolation or disconnectedness factor in much more strongly.

Interestingly, a normative number for Australia is 7.5 with a self-assessed number overall of 7.7. I’m a bit off their norm but only by one standard deviation or so. And I’m more curious if my number changes over time than the norms.

Although honestly, I just thought they were cool questions for a reflection post.

#50by50ish #50 – Lose weight – Part 12, the emotions

The PolyBlog
January 16 2019

I mentioned last week that I had some ideas for some posts, and was wondering when I would write about them, which week I would handle this or that idea. But I’ve been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster in the last week, and there’s no real cause, so I thought I would talk about that instead.

Since I started doing my blogging and telling my story, I have felt all my nerve endings range from totally dead to constant sparking, at least emotionally. Last week, I was dealing with a bit of disappointment (as I went back to work) about the fact that I hadn’t accomplished more logistically in my six weeks off, or hadn’t had greater results for my health situation. Going back to work itself is also a potential source of stress as I return to a new job, new environment, and a lot of uncertainty. Even with the great news about my A1C numbers, it was an up and down week.

Then the bus crash happened in Ottawa on Friday. And everytime something like that happens, it affects me A LOT. I picture the aftermath for the families, the fickle hand of fate knocking your men over on the chessboard that is your life. Man plans and God laughs, as the saying goes. But trying to explain some of it to Jacob was VERY emotional for me. Hell, I can get emotional at a Bell commercial, so that’s nothing new, I suppose.

Yet later, on an unrelated activity,  I was doing some story imagining techniques to kickstart my creativity and I suddenly found myself following my brain into stories and ideas with high emotional content. Eulogies and traumatic events, how to handle them, process them, etc. I was trying to distract myself and instead my internal squirrels took me there anyway.

As I started writing this, I had just finished watching an online video, nobody I knew, about a blind woman who was reluctant to put a lot of energy into a wedding that would no longer be her dream experience, and yet her photographer cum organizer created some really special techniques for her other senses. Sad in some ways but mostly happy, and I started bawling like a baby. FOR NO REAL REASON. It wasn`t that universally amazing, I didn’t know her. There was no real emotional content for me in the story, yet it wiped me out. Because my emotions are so fragile these days, or maybe just raw. I’ve been doing a bit of reading, and the most likely cause in these circumstances is the actual weight loss process.

It caught me by surprise. I assumed, as most do, that successful weight loss would lead primarily to simple feelings of happiness, but I am not naive enough to think it would cure all life’s ills either. But apparently the “heightened emotional response” can go hand in hand with weight loss.

First and foremost, lots of weight issues are tied to emotions…if you deal with the weight, it often digs up other emotions. Makes sense, and nothing new there in my view. I’d even go so far as to say I was mostly ready for it, it’s how I got to where I am.

But beyond that, I hadn’t really thought about some of the other aspects. Like that simply trying to lose weight in a visible fashion, such as taking pictures and sharing them on a blog (!), can make you feel extremely vulnerable and insecure. No longer am I hiding my true self, and thus in the parlance, I might feel exposed. (Check! By choice, because I need it to keep my motivation alive, but still check!).

That same process also attracts attention, and on a subject that I normally have shunned. I’m ill-equipped to handle it in whatever form I get as interactions (such as my normal Dive! Dive! Dive! response I mentioned in an earlier post). And regardless of the form of attention, my self-esteem is on the front line.

There are some who report anger (i.e., new attention from people makes people think the others are shallow or if the new attention isn’t supportive in the way they hope), fear, anxiety, disappointed, etc. It can even make people self-aborbed. (hmm for the first, check for the additional elements!).

Unfortunately, most of the advice out there is of the form, “The only way out is through”, and while I agree with the sentiment, it doesn’t do much to help me through the mental side of managing my emotions. The blog helps of course, as does trying to avoid comparisons, working on my self-confidence in other areas, and celebrating my achievements as I go. They also recommend setting aside time for self-reflection but I think I have that one already covered. 🙂

However, I think most importantly for me, I just have to be aware that my emotions are heightened and reactions like I’m having today are not uncommon. I just have to be ready for them. And buckle myself in for the ride.