exercise and food stuff
Jul. 7th, 2017 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jhameiaYesterday I tried to do something different and split my usual hour-and-a-half walk into two things: a morning bike ride up the road I usually walk on, turning off to circle around and then cruise down the long road after, and a swim in the late afternoon around 4.30pm.
UCR has a bikeshare program with Zagster which has been pretty awesome. I usually cycle home and it cuts my walk home in half (from around 22-25 minutes to 10). I do once in a while try to cycle TO campus, but it is mostly uphill. (Also by the time I get to the station most of the bikes are gone so blergh. Because of the summer, most of the bikes are still at the station, so that's been nice.)
So I cycled uphill and after the first major hill my knees were bitching and my heartrate was so high I was afraid I'd topple over. They don't hurt today though, so I think it is a thing I'm just going to have to get used to. The cruise down was tempered by many stops (it's a residential area after all) but man, it reminded me that I'm a huge gravity geek. This is why I can't do stationary exercise bikes... they're too joyless compared to all that wind in my face.
The swim later was actually really good. I had to swim around a couple of kids who didn't seem to recognize that they really only needed one side of the pool to horse around in. Otherwise, I swam 12 laps (back-and-forth is one lap), in three-lap bursts. In the past, I've gotten to 8 laps before I got tired. I've tried working my way down to swimming more slowly than before--I used to basically try to sprint which made me tired faster--in order to make more laps. I once went swimming with Nin Harris (before she decided she didn't want to be my friend anymore) and watched her swim 30 laps, practically non-stop, because she went slowly and steadily. It's still super-inspiring... every time I think I'm swimming really fast, I always think of her, and slow down.
I'd like to do this on a more regular basis, but I really need to figure out my hair. I use a lot of shampoo and conditioner for my hair because it's so long now--halfway down my back. It's very pretty hair, I love it, but washing it often is a pain because I don't like blow-drying my hair much. I do plan on cutting it, once my defense is done, sort of to mark the end of a life chapter, but for now I'd like to keep it, since it's one of the things that's keeping me happy. (I don't let it down often, but it looks really good down.) I do rinse my hair before and after the swim, as a habit.
I might switch up the hour-and-a-half walk with the bike-and-swim combo every other day, if only to keep up my Pokemon Go habit. But... but it's still so fucking hot in the evenings...? T^T
I'm still trying to keep lunch as my biggest meal. I keep trying to make breakfast the big meal, and have an apple or something during lunchtime, but it just makes me want to move my dinner up earlier, like to around 4pm, and around 4pm, I'm usually still in my office, and trying to avoid going home because AUGH DAYSTAR HOT SUN HEAT AUGH Also unless I've been awake for some time I'm just not a big breakfast kind of person.
But I do want to keep dinner as light as possible... trying to figure out what that would mean. I'm getting pretty good at stopping when I am satisfied! Still want munchies and I keep forgetting to bring my chewtoy along, but I've been refraining from consuming as much sweet stuff as before, so that's been nice. (Hopefully will NOT binge when I hit my target...)
I've been combining Honey Nut Cheerios and corn flakes. The Cheerios sort of *almost* taste like cardboard fiber, but not direly so.
This whole watching-my-food thing is kind of misery-inducing though. I know it's a matter of cultivating better eating habits for my health, but at the back of my mind my parents keep making disappointed noises and a hospital bill looms for a one-night stay as a result of an eating disorder I had when I was 14. I feel if I had someone to be upbeat about the whole thing with me, it might go easier? It was really nice being able to split a chocolate cake three ways when my brother and dad were here.
I'm sitting at Coco's today, slowly eating a bacon-and-eggs flatbread, which I like a lot, and I'm trying to consume it over a four-hour period while writing the dissertation. I'd also like a clam chowder and fries, but that might be a bit ambitious.
Maurisa left behind her portable water filter, which she got because she's from the Bay and can't tolerate the minerals in Riverside water. I thought my Brita filters were doing okay, but in the long run, her filter is a lot cheaper? The best part for me is that, because of how the filter works--one tube for the drinkable water, one tube for the water into which the minerals have been junked into--I've also been watering my plants, rather than throw away the junk water. In the past I've had to awkwardly put my watering can into the sink and lift it up and it was just so much work, so I ended up not bothering. Now, because I need the drinking water anyway, it's like I can do two things at once: filter water and get plant water at the same time. I'm kind of digging it. My roommate is probably not going to understand the whole thing and will probably just dump the junk water but I will tell him that unless he's going to fill my watering can, he has his own damn water filter so he can use that instead of using mine.
This means I can think about rejuvenating my composting dreams! I had to give it up because of my dissertation, depression, and general lack of motivation to work on my garden because it's kind of hard without an outdoor water spout. The cardboard boxes are no longer doing it for me, and I think it's time to think about cutting them up, and maybe burying them, but that involves digging my garden, which I'm not feeling right now, what with 40'c weather.
Riverside weather is supposed to hit 42'C this weekend, which is FUCKING. HEINOUS. Luckily S. is back in California and up for a trip down to San Diego, and we're going to visit the new Clarion cohort, hang with Nalo, and cook bak kut teh for the potluck! I'd like to go back to Black's Beach sometime, and go swimming naked in the sea again, but maybe some other time. Lisa gets back soon and she's housesitting in Santa Ana, and I might try to join her for a week or so, just to escape the weather here. I'm also considering couch surfing in the Bay Area. Who knows. IDK. I just don't feel very productive here.
UCR has a bikeshare program with Zagster which has been pretty awesome. I usually cycle home and it cuts my walk home in half (from around 22-25 minutes to 10). I do once in a while try to cycle TO campus, but it is mostly uphill. (Also by the time I get to the station most of the bikes are gone so blergh. Because of the summer, most of the bikes are still at the station, so that's been nice.)
So I cycled uphill and after the first major hill my knees were bitching and my heartrate was so high I was afraid I'd topple over. They don't hurt today though, so I think it is a thing I'm just going to have to get used to. The cruise down was tempered by many stops (it's a residential area after all) but man, it reminded me that I'm a huge gravity geek. This is why I can't do stationary exercise bikes... they're too joyless compared to all that wind in my face.
The swim later was actually really good. I had to swim around a couple of kids who didn't seem to recognize that they really only needed one side of the pool to horse around in. Otherwise, I swam 12 laps (back-and-forth is one lap), in three-lap bursts. In the past, I've gotten to 8 laps before I got tired. I've tried working my way down to swimming more slowly than before--I used to basically try to sprint which made me tired faster--in order to make more laps. I once went swimming with Nin Harris (before she decided she didn't want to be my friend anymore) and watched her swim 30 laps, practically non-stop, because she went slowly and steadily. It's still super-inspiring... every time I think I'm swimming really fast, I always think of her, and slow down.
I'd like to do this on a more regular basis, but I really need to figure out my hair. I use a lot of shampoo and conditioner for my hair because it's so long now--halfway down my back. It's very pretty hair, I love it, but washing it often is a pain because I don't like blow-drying my hair much. I do plan on cutting it, once my defense is done, sort of to mark the end of a life chapter, but for now I'd like to keep it, since it's one of the things that's keeping me happy. (I don't let it down often, but it looks really good down.) I do rinse my hair before and after the swim, as a habit.
I might switch up the hour-and-a-half walk with the bike-and-swim combo every other day, if only to keep up my Pokemon Go habit. But... but it's still so fucking hot in the evenings...? T^T
I'm still trying to keep lunch as my biggest meal. I keep trying to make breakfast the big meal, and have an apple or something during lunchtime, but it just makes me want to move my dinner up earlier, like to around 4pm, and around 4pm, I'm usually still in my office, and trying to avoid going home because AUGH DAYSTAR HOT SUN HEAT AUGH Also unless I've been awake for some time I'm just not a big breakfast kind of person.
But I do want to keep dinner as light as possible... trying to figure out what that would mean. I'm getting pretty good at stopping when I am satisfied! Still want munchies and I keep forgetting to bring my chewtoy along, but I've been refraining from consuming as much sweet stuff as before, so that's been nice. (Hopefully will NOT binge when I hit my target...)
I've been combining Honey Nut Cheerios and corn flakes. The Cheerios sort of *almost* taste like cardboard fiber, but not direly so.
This whole watching-my-food thing is kind of misery-inducing though. I know it's a matter of cultivating better eating habits for my health, but at the back of my mind my parents keep making disappointed noises and a hospital bill looms for a one-night stay as a result of an eating disorder I had when I was 14. I feel if I had someone to be upbeat about the whole thing with me, it might go easier? It was really nice being able to split a chocolate cake three ways when my brother and dad were here.
I'm sitting at Coco's today, slowly eating a bacon-and-eggs flatbread, which I like a lot, and I'm trying to consume it over a four-hour period while writing the dissertation. I'd also like a clam chowder and fries, but that might be a bit ambitious.
Maurisa left behind her portable water filter, which she got because she's from the Bay and can't tolerate the minerals in Riverside water. I thought my Brita filters were doing okay, but in the long run, her filter is a lot cheaper? The best part for me is that, because of how the filter works--one tube for the drinkable water, one tube for the water into which the minerals have been junked into--I've also been watering my plants, rather than throw away the junk water. In the past I've had to awkwardly put my watering can into the sink and lift it up and it was just so much work, so I ended up not bothering. Now, because I need the drinking water anyway, it's like I can do two things at once: filter water and get plant water at the same time. I'm kind of digging it. My roommate is probably not going to understand the whole thing and will probably just dump the junk water but I will tell him that unless he's going to fill my watering can, he has his own damn water filter so he can use that instead of using mine.
This means I can think about rejuvenating my composting dreams! I had to give it up because of my dissertation, depression, and general lack of motivation to work on my garden because it's kind of hard without an outdoor water spout. The cardboard boxes are no longer doing it for me, and I think it's time to think about cutting them up, and maybe burying them, but that involves digging my garden, which I'm not feeling right now, what with 40'c weather.
Riverside weather is supposed to hit 42'C this weekend, which is FUCKING. HEINOUS. Luckily S. is back in California and up for a trip down to San Diego, and we're going to visit the new Clarion cohort, hang with Nalo, and cook bak kut teh for the potluck! I'd like to go back to Black's Beach sometime, and go swimming naked in the sea again, but maybe some other time. Lisa gets back soon and she's housesitting in Santa Ana, and I might try to join her for a week or so, just to escape the weather here. I'm also considering couch surfing in the Bay Area. Who knows. IDK. I just don't feel very productive here.