Last weekend I hiked up to Douglas Springs Campground in Saguaro National Park East. It was a great hike with some fantastic views. It was a long hike, clocking in at just under 14 miles.
The whole experience was definitely worth the effort.
Fitness.
Hiking Mount Lemmon: Incinerator Ridge Trail.
Not only is hiking a much needed escape for my mental well-being, making videos about the experience is equally as mentally grounding for me. Here’s a video of yesterday’s hike.
Beats.
With the desert heat kicking into high gear this week, I needed to abandon the practice of sunset walks around the neighborhood as a form of exercise. Even though the sun is setting around 7:30 PM (1930) MST, it’s still well over 100F when this is happening and the walks are just not enjoyable for me. One of the things I realized back in 2021 when we first moved here was that summer was the indoor season here in the Sonoran Desert, versus our summer experiences back east.
I can live with it. I can easily live with it.
In order to keep my calories burned counts up I have gone back to playing Beat Saber on my Oculus Quest 2 VR headset. The experience has been good for the most part, aside from my aging headset occasionally glitching as it’s trying to update or something in the background. It’s still stuck on Chicago time because Meta offers absolutely no way to change the time zone on the unit after it’s original setup. So I play Beat Saber in the future when I’m in the present. I find this highly disconcerting due to my OCD-like tendencies, but I deal with it.
I think of Beat Saber as just an overblown version of Super Breakout from my Atari 2600 days and that’s probably why I enjoy the game. I tend to keep the same playlist for the experience; my favorite song on the platform is “Boy With Luv” by the South Korean boyband BTS. There’s one maneuver in the “hard” level that’s fun, because you get to throw the sabers in the air and then the colors change and it’s just a feel good moment. Plus, the song is written in a major key and we all need more major key experiences in the world.
Things needn’t be discordant all the time.
Wait, Weight, Don’t Tell Me.
My husband unpacked our bathroom scale today. It’s awaiting the great revealing in the morning. I haven’t weighed myself in over three weeks.
I’m terrified to see what numbers are going to spin up on the display. I’m hoping for something that will be like winning at the casino. I’m probably not even going to get my quarter back.
Space.
We have a good sized condo here on the north side of Chicago. When we were moving to the Windy City, there were a couple of things that we found about this location attractive, and one of those things was the space in our unit. It’s about the same size as our first house. We have plenty of room to live. However, there isn’t a lot of room to move about.
I usually go for walks several times a day. This helps a little bit with my cardio and I’m able to figure things out in my head, whether it’s work or something else I’m pondering about, while I’m strolling through the neighborhood at a decent pace.
With the wind chill currently at -20ºF, I’m not feeling the need to go for a lovely stroll today. This latest winter storm is suppose to continue for the next 30 hours.
This morning I decided to give Apple Fitness+ another try. I went through four different routines, each 10 minutes long. The core routine about kicked my butt, but it was a good kicking that I needed. I then did a couple of yoga routines with Dustin. I was surprised at how easily I remembered my yoga class from 1998. As I sit here typing this blog entry my muscles feel worked out and I feel like I’m off to a good start for a Monday morning.
The thing about Apple Fitness+, or any workout regimen for that matter, is that you need plenty of space to do this sort of thing. The spare bedroom lends itself to Apple Fitness+ for the most part, but I needed to make a couple of modification to accommodate what Dustin was asking me to do.
One of the things I’m looking forward to in the new house is having space for this sort of thing again. I have to admit I really enjoyed my Apple Fitness+ experience this morning, and I look forward to doing more this during the week’s cold snap, but I’m really looking forward to giving it a whirl where I have more space to move about and really get into it.
If you’re looking into Apple Fitness+, I recommend using an iPad or Apple TV to follow along. I don’t know how well it would work on an iPhone. Perhaps my eyesight is just at that point where I can’t see what’s going on using a small screen.
If you’re thinking of trying Apple Fitness+, I say give it a whirl. Just give yourself some space to go through the movements.
Climb.
Everyone tries to get in shape at this time of the year. I do the same thing, though this week has been a little tricky with the need for exercise combatting the need to sleep and need to stress eat. Stress eating is fun! Are McRibs still around?
I’ve been avoiding the building elevator and walking the stairs instead. I don’t know if this helps a great deal but it makes me feel like I’m going to pass out after I walk up to our condo. I often hear about “runner’s highs” and “hitting the wall” but I just skip over that part and tinker on unconsciousness instead.
I don’t know if I’m burning many more calories this way but I feel like my already strong legs could probably push a Volkswagen or Karmann Ghia across a parking lot.
Gamification.
When Apple release Watch OS 7 a week or two ago, all eligible Apple Watches were introduced to many new features. One of the highlights of this release is improved sleep tracking. Apple now encourages you to wear your watch to bed so you know how well you slept.
I’ve been using this since the day of release. Tonight will be the first night that I will not be participating in this latest gamification of life.
I don’t sleep well. I know this. I haven’t slept well in the past several years. Much of it is from feeling the weight of the country on my shoulders, but I also hear things in the big city or once in a while a neighbor, who we usually never hear, will make some startling noise in the middle of the night and then I’ll be in bed all wide-eyed thinking about random thoughts. Occasionally my brain will not shift out of overdrive and I’ll get into this light sleep. The way it really works is I instantly fall asleep but it doesn’t last long enough. As I’m falling asleep I jerk and bob in bed. My husband should probably have a seat belt for his side of the bed. I’ll save the sleep walking tales for another blog entry.
The last thing I need is watch on my arm and my mind grinding on the thoughts of what my “sleep score” will be in the morning.
There’s also another thing to think about with this sleep tracking. Apple doesn’t have a great track record with reliably sounding alarms for waking in the morning. The slightest disruption in the atmospheric continuum, like a time change or a tidal assault from the moon or something, and Apple can’t remember to sound the alarm. So I start waking up about 30 minutes before I should to see if I’ve missed the alarm.
The last thing that was bothering me about this sleep tracking is there’s really one schedule unless you get into full tinkering mode with the clunky app and Apple tries really hard to lock you into that schedule. But! It doesn’t turn the alarm on for the next day unless you manually turn it on before bed.
This is not a good UI design.
I don’t need to track my sleep to make rings close and harps whine when I wake up in the morning. If I want to track my sleep I can check the security cams to see if I’ve walked around or if I’m being over restless I’ll know because my husband rolled me over or something.
I know Apple wants us to be as healthy as possible and I feel like they’re mostly genuine in their intent, but I’m not as big a fan of the gamification of health as I thought I would be. It’s bad enough that the Fitness app never gives you a rest day without scolding you for not closing your rings in successive days. I don’t need reminders on how to sleep.
For those that enjoy the gamification of life, have at it. Love it. Take it to the next level.
I’ll sit here and nap as I tell you kids to get off my front lawn.
Weight Weight.
The primary goal for maintaining and/or losing weight is so I don’t mess up weight and balance in the airplanes I fly. I enjoy flying with full tanks, especially when taking my husband on a cross country flight, and to do that in the current airplanes available to me we have to meet certain weight and balance requirements. We’re well within the margin of concern but I don’t want to mess that up.
Hence, at lunch time we throw around Pretzel Crisps with a smattering of something that resembles buffalo dust like their poker chips at a World Tournament.
I’ve been tracking every single calorie consumed since the day after Christmas and I’m happy to say that the yo-yo is swinging in the good direction again. My weight is below that which it was at Thanksgiving. With all the weight I’ve gained and lost over the years I should be the size of a thimble.
When a package says I can eat 10 crisps, I eat 10 crisps. The fun part is assembling the broken pieces to resemble full pieces so I know I’m getting every last morsel in the serving I am allowing myself to eat. Luckily, many packages now also contain the weight of a serving so we can use the precision scale we have for such a thing.
Going to McDonalds however can be cumbersome when you have to slide the weights across the bar to compute the weight of a Big Mac.
I know in the long run this will all be worth it. It’s the mathematics that are exhausting.
I need a 1.3 oz cookie.
Watched.
Since the end of January I’ve been participating in the Weight Watchers program. At least that’s what it was called when we started the program; apparently it’s called something different now. The WW stands for whatever you want it to stand for. I think they were going for “Wonder Woman” but then realized those words were copyrighted and would probably alienate the small, yet present male population that also participates in the program. So now WW stands for Why? Why?
For $20 a month (plus a hefty dose of Illinois Sales Tax), I am judged by a mediocre app experience at least three times a day. I have lost 25 pounds along this journey. The more I lose, the less points I am allowed to eat. A typical supper involves Earl making a meatball sandwich. He then throws the meatballs by my face while I inhale the mist of the meat. On Friday nights we go all out and he blows the scent of tomato paste in my face. I then deduct a healthy dollop of the scant amount of points I’m allowed. He then eats the meatball sandwich because he gets decades more points than I’m allowed and then he eats a brownie while in hiding in the other room as I weep.
I must tell you this whole Weight Watchers experience has me feeling as wonderful as an audience member of Oprah’s show where she released the bees.
At 50 years old, amid the pressures of being a gay man that has never really fit into any situation, let alone an urban gay community such as that found in the city of Chicago, I know that I’m suppose to try to turn back time and look as fantastic as possible. I should try to be healthy because, despite the fact that I’m a stress eater, the food supply is rampant with as many unhealthy cost-effective ingredients as possible, and I must work my ass off 10-12 hours a day so we can have nice things, I need to keep my numbers in a range that was determined in the 1950s when folks had actual food made from actual ingredients, time to sleep, and worked eight-ish hours a day.
Nothing brings more joy to my heart than eating an eighth of a soy burger on a bun and seeing that I’ve used my points up for the next three days. Oprah sits there on a “WW” commercial wolfing down tacos and making sing-song noises about how she can eat anything she wants. I had one taco in Salt Lake City, Utah during our vacation and “WW” told me I had just burned off a third of my daily points and by the end of the day I realized I did not earn the coveted Blue Dot, a passive aggressive reminder that once again I failed at keeping my points within range.
Every night I see these millennial types sitting in all the pubs and restaurants and other glorious things we have here in Chicago. They have plates of nachos, plenty of beers, and they’re smiling and laughing and having a grand time. I wedge myself into a booth, order a beer, and Yet Another Salad and by the end of the experience I’m slightly giddy but needing a shirt that says “Goodyear” up the side. The happy millennial types order another round as they look at me playing on my phone.
I’m looking down being passive aggressively scolded by the “WW” app. I have lost my dot again.
Health.
As a middle-aged American private pilot I am required by the FAA to have a physical every two years. This physical has to be completed by an FAA Aviation Medical Examiner. Luckily, there are several in the area so finding an AME in these parts isn’t a difficult thing to do. The physical is a thorough assessment of eye sight, color perception, reflexes, blood pressure and the like, overall physical well being and a review of medications and medical history. There are many disqualifying medications, luckily I’m not taking any of them. Yesterday I was deemed fit enough to fly for another two years. To celebrate I went on a solo flight last night and practiced some night landings to maintain my night currency. I have to have three full-stop landings within 90 days to take passengers up with me at night.
One of the things that we talked about during my flight physical was my weight gain since my physical two years ago. My weight has always been akin to a yo-yo. I’m not the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life but I’m currently in the upper 2/3rds of my average weight swings and I’d like to shed a few pounds, primarily to lower my blood pressure naturally and to feel physically better about myself.
That’s where smart choices come in.
Unfortunately, out in the wild there’s a lot of false information out there when it comes to making healthy choices. For example, the convenience store on the corner sells fountain drinks in small, medium and large sizes: 24, 32 and 44 ounce cups. To combat any guilt of one consuming that much sugar, they offer two types of ice: Low Carb and Diet Ice.
Honestly, I don’t know what the difference between Low Carb and Diet Ice is, because ice should be frozen water, which shouldn’t have any calories nor carbs. I mean, water is water. I asked the clerk and she said it was plain water, there was nothing special about it other than it was Low Carb and good for diets.
Every once in a while I treat myself to a diet pop, which I know isn’t good for me. I’ve cut back on diet pop consumption considerably, having such a drink only once or twice a week. I’ve lost a couple of pounds since making this adjustment, and every little bit helps. I’m also focusing on salads; Earl and I just enjoyed a wonderful salad for lunch this afternoon. Another thing that we are doing is eating at home more and saving eating out for when we travel.
The most important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is moving, and this is something that I am trying to do on a daily basis. When you make your living sitting at a desk staring at a computer all day, it’s important to get up and move at least once an hour. I also go for two 20-minute walks during my workday, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Now that spring is here I plan on riding the bike before work, for the past couple of weeks I’ve been braving the traffic in the neighborhood and walking on the shoulder of our busy road. Every step counts.
I have a goal of losing a privately-determined amount of weight by my birthday in July. It’ll take a lot of small steps to get there, but every step counts.
