Health & Wellness: Surprise!

Our health & wellness program at work officially starts next week, so to prep for that, we did optional fitness assessments with our health & wellness folks today.

As expected, I have a high BMI and I'm still comfortably over 200 lbs. My body fat percentage is also average-to-high at 26-31% (the readout I thought I saw was 31%, but the calculator I just used calculates me at 26%).

Despite or because of these numbers, our two fitness trainers were a little stunned at how well I did on my one-minute timed tests. 40 pushups (yes, real ones. She counted 40, but I only count 38 cause the last two were lame) and 50 situps. My flexibility was apparently the best of the whole lot of folks who came before me (they only have two more assessments to go). My blood pressure came out higher than it does at the doctor's, but it's still well within the healthy range (138/72. My last one at the doc was 110/64 or something ridiculous like that). My resting heartrate also came out at 88, but I think he did it wrong because when we did the post step-test heartrate, it came up at 76, lower than my resting heartrate. Must have just been nerves.

When I finished the last part of it, the flexibility bit, R., our male trainer, watched me blow past his flexibility record and said, "What's your regular workout routine again? Wow."

On the one hand, I think some of the shock had to do with the assumption that plump people (particularly when you say "diabetes") aren't fit, on the other hand, from the sound of things, I just did pretty well straight up in general compared to other folks in the office, which is always surprising, even if I do workout a lot.

Wednesday we get our gym tour of the YMCA across the street, and our workouts start Monday. Mine's 1-2:30pm. The nice thing about a midday workout Monday and Weds is that it means I don't have to stay late at the gym those nights. I can get straight home, so my only late days will be Tues, Thurs and the Fridays I feel like going.

Frees up some time.

Which means... more time for writing!

Get Your Shit Together

So I was on the phone with my not-Boyfriend last night, and, to put it bluntly, I kicked his ass. You can only put up with so much emo whining before you just crack.

You know what, everybody?

Life is hard.

Really fucking hard.

Getting what you want out of life?

Even fucking harder.

I have had a shitty couple of years. Let's be honest. I got a chronic illness that cost me 30K and 4 days in the hospital and takes up a staggering amount of time, money and energy to manage on a daily basis (not to mention self-control, discipline, and plain fucking hard work). I've been in four relationships, two of which ended in smoking ruin, been dumped twice (three times, actually, two people). I was laid off from my cushy but (let's face it) dull Chicago job, blew through my 401(K), fucked up my friendship with my best friend, rang up 17K in credit card debt (16, 17, 18? Really, who can keep track?), and had books rejected by agents and publishers across the board.

And you know what? I could have chosen to deal with any and all of these things: chronic illness, job loss, fucked relationship(s), the usual rejection, with giving up. With hiding under my bed and feeling sorry for myself. I could have denied the whole chronic illness thing and continued to subsist primarily on carbs and sob into my brown sugar oatmeal in the morning and run around wacked-shit crazy because my sugar levels were all over the fucking board, running around with crazy depression and weepiness and tell everybody "poor me! Poor me!"

Fuck that shit.

Why the hell would I choose to hide under my bed and cry all the time? What's the point in that? What does it accomplish? Lying around feeling sorry for myself doesn't change the situation.

I hate that I have to work my ass off just to feel "normal" now. I need an hour of exercise a day and a low-carb lifestyle to feel my best. And just to keep that up takes not just willpower, but fucking work. I have to adjust all my insulin levels and correct for lows and test all the time, because sugar's easier to manage if you have a set routine - sugar's always easier to manage when I'm sedentary, cause then I'm not having lows all the time and feeling like I want to rip people's heads off and unable to concentrate at work for 20 minutes while I even out again.

Ridiculous.

Instead, to be at my best, I have to go through a calibration phase every time I mix up my routine. So for the first week of a new workout routine I'm adjusting my sugar. Oh, sure, it gets easier once you have the new formula down, but the reason I like routine - eating and exercise - is because it's just so much fucking work to change it up. And I still have to change it up sometimes. And it sucks.

Also, having a fucking budget sucks. It really sucks. It sucks that I have to cut out all the fucking cheap-ass food (because it is, of course, full of carbs) but can't splurge on expensive cheese - the only stuff I can eat totally guilt free that I adore! - because, again, it's fucking expensive. it really sucks. It sucks to live on fajitas and spinach salad. It sucks not going out to eat all the time and buying diet cherry coke. I hate it.

But what I hate more than ANYTHING, more than any of this fucking WORK, is being a fucking loser. Is falling down and not getting the fuck up again. Everybody gets to whine and bitch and moan sometimes, you know? But when you're done bitching, you get the fuck up. You take it a step at a time. You figure out what you want and you start to build it, one block at a time.

You get your health together first, because if you're mentally wacky, you can't do shit. And that's pretty fucking hard, too. Not everybody has health insurance or people in their lives to love and support them through the hard shit. It's called fucking privilege, to have health insurance and a support network. So if you've got it, shut the fuck up and stop bitching and get your fucking shit together.

Get your shit together, not-Boyfriend.

24 Hours of Daylight

People would often ask me what 20 hours of daylight looked like in Fairbanks, or 20 hours of darkness.

Well, it's a lot like this 24-hours of daylight, only the sun does actually dip beneath the horizon for those four or five hours during the Fairbanksan summer.