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Aqua class
I ended up- taking part in the aqua aerobics class with my “client” tonight instead of just swimming. There are various reasons I did this, some related to this guy but I decided I would give it a try after a long time.
I think last time I did the class I was terribly unfit and found it exhausting. It was a different teacher, though, so perhaps it was a more rigorous class too. Tonight it was just about too easy. I didn’t feel like my heart rate increased all that much and I wasn’t all that tired at the end. The only benefit I seemed to gain was from the water weights workout, which did give me a bit of challenge. I think my upper arms will be sore tomorrow since I’ve not used the weights in the water before…or at least in a long time.
I will probably go back to doing mostly swimming while the “client” is doing the class. I think it’s also easier to keep watch on him that way than when I am trying to concentrate on the exercises at the same time. Also the thing I really don’t like about the classes is that there are inevitably sets of exercises that I get totally messed up on and don’t follow the pattern. I know it’s not a big deal but it bugs me enough to put me off doing them. Especially when it’s not the same routine all the time. It’s even worse when I do aerobics classes…not that I do them…but I have tried ones of video and found I was hopeless at keeping up without heaps of practice. LOL
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Swimming
I get into the pool for free at least a couple of times a week due to my work as a carer. My client does the aqua aerobics class regularly and I have taken lately to walking and swimming while he’s occupied. I do this in the lanes next to the classes so I can keep an eye on his. Some carers stay right next to the clients for almost everything but I find this causes my client to become too dependent on me. Also I find it easier to keep a watch outside of the class. Anyway, I do keep busy while he’s busy, either with him or nearby.
Initially I was mostly just doing lots of aqua walking and that was good. But in more recent weeks I’ve started swimming, or what I consider my close approximation of swimming. I don’t use the proper strokes all the time but I am kind of close. I never learned to swim properly so really need to take a class to learn proper breathing and the proper strokes but I am reasonably competent at moving the water now. Just a bit slow.
The swimming sort of evolved from some movements I was doing in the water with my arms and added the feet along with it. Seems they turned into actual swimming even though I was doing most of the movement in the walking lane. I’ve been working on building up some stamina while swimming and have gotten a lot faster on some of the strokes. I hadn’t been timing my swims but tonight I started seeing how long it took me to swim the length of the pool (25m). The first time I checked I was over a minute but when I put more effort in I would get faster and I had several laps where I managed to get there in about 45 seconds. I was kind of impressed with my progress. I couldn’t sustain this for too long. I might start out going at a good pace but could sustain it for the full 25 m. I guess I started to flag around the last third so I’d end up taking over a minute in the end. Still it feels good to make some progress. My aim isn’t to become particularly fast but enough to feel like I’m not in the way of other swimmers.
My Apple watch updated its system recently and the activity app changed a few things so that it now is able to distinguish strokes while swimming. It doesn’t recognise my butterfly but it does get the other ones right most of the time. Plus it records how fast I got and how long I rest and all sort of interesting information Who knew this watch would be so cool. I don’t regret the purchase at all. :)
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Fitness
I think I posted that in June I had a nasty respiratory infection that affected me pretty badly for nearly two weeks and then lingered on as a nagging cough for weeks after that. Until that point I’d been keeping to some good exercise and eating habits and I was fitting into smaller-sized clothes again. I tried to keep up the exercise even when sick but my body was determined to rest and so I had to get back on track. I thought I had got back on track in July but I couldn’t quite keep going and kept relapsing into bad habits and an inclination to doing very little activity. I suspect some of this was related to the usual winter malaise that hangs over me.
I finally got going again a few weeks ago and can happily say I’ve been on track since then. I mostly work with my Apple watch activity monitor and try to increase that every week. I do take one day off each week, the day I have tai chi. I still get some exercise but it’s a it’s not enough to meet daily requirements. Well that could happen some of the time but I am not making any special efforts towards it at the moment. I am keeping it truly as a rest day.
I really do feel it’s a mental battle on some days to force myself to get the minimum of exercise. But I find it easier to win that battle when I keep up than when I get lazy. I guess it provides a bit of momentum. It’s much harder when illness kicks in and makes you stop for long periods of time.
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Still coughing but…
That’s about all that’s left of the crud going through our house for a while last month. Interesting is that Lego Lover had the shortest version of bug and is probably the most recovered even now. Most of the coughing is currently done by Game Fanatic and me…we seem to be the ones who get the long-lasting cough these days.
My cough comes and goes and is often triggered by cold foods and spicy foods and sometimes warm foods and sometimes cold air…fun. It won’t last forever but it’s aggravating.
Anyway, I am getting more regular exercise again. After my pool exercise last week I took another break and then restarted exercise again. This week when I was at the pool I was fine with the deep breaths so I figure my lungs or something was still healing the week before. I was in the pool twice this week and both times I felt pretty good afterwards. The other days I’ve been walking or using the spin bike. Tomorrow I’m kind of hoping it’s sunny enough to ride my bike. A bonus would be if it’s not too windy also. I didn’t do as much exercise today because my knees were bothering me a bit. Not painful but a bit sore after walking around in Fremantle for while today. So I didn’t end of burning off as many calories but I am going to try to not obsess about doing a minimum each day just yet.
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Restarting
This week I am back to exercise again and it’s not been all bad but not all good either. I’m trying to meet my daily calorie commitments set on my watch but came up just short on Tuesday. I did get exercise but it wasn’t the sort that easily is recorded on the watch. So this week won’t be a perfect one but I did get some exercise.
Today I did a short walk before going to meet my carer client. That went pretty well. It wasn’t exactly warm today but not really cold either. I walked on a path that has been a regular one of late and it’s mostly in shade. But I didn’t need my jacket so I think it was okay. If I’d been out longer I probably would have needed one since the sun was rapidly setting. It was only a twenty minute walk and I was walking a pretty quick pace and felt okay for it.
The real fun happened when I took G to the pool. I mostly was just walking laps but also did some laps (half laps sometimes) where I was doing kicking my feet and using my hands/arms to propel myself. I wouldn’t call it a swim exactly since I wasn’t doing proper strokes or movements but it wasn’t walking since my feet were off the ground. Anyway it’s 25 metres across and I managed to go to the other end the first time and was exhausted at first. I did more walking and then tried again and managed to go across and back to the start a few times. My arms and legs were fine but the breathing was really painful once I started taking in deep breaths. And then I end up coughing a lot. At one point I accidentally inhaled a tiny amount of pool water and that got me spluttering quite a bit. I decided to stick to just walking across after that since I’d already been in the water for a while.
Meanwhile at the Lorikeet house, the Scientist is mostly better now and the boys are still feeling pretty rotten. I think Game Fanatic had improved a bit during the day but tonight he’s really coughing a lot.
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A new post
I just noticed it’s been over three months since my last post. I really seem to go in dribs and drabs at the best of times.
Life carries on at the Lorikeet household.
I am working more hours these days. The man I am a carer for got lots more funding this year and my two hour shift doubled to four. Plus I have taken over for the other carer on several occasions, and the pay is quite a bit more for weekend days and even more on holidays. Anyway, I’ll be adding an extra eight hours over two more days in a couple of weeks to cover for the other carer who is unable to continue with that work load at the moment. This is to continue until November although there is always a chance I will keep some of those hours. It’s not quite as many hours as I’d like but it’s still so much more than the measly two I’ve been doing.
Also, I did stints at two campuses of counting people in rooms for a utilisation survey in March/April. Each last a week of fours hours daily. The first week was quite easy, thanks to my much fitter body. The second week was pretty exhausting since it covered a lot more ground. I think I was walking something like 10 kms a day for that job.
I am still doing pretty well with my exercise regime. I did fall off the wagon on doing more strength training but I am getting cardio workouts several times a week right now. My biggest challenge has been eating habits. Around Easter I started going heavy on carbs and I could tell a difference with overload. I have settled back down from that but still find I’m eating too much junk so need to work that little bit more on improving eating habits.
We recently started a new term at tai chi and the Scientist and I starting to learn tai chi sword. We’ve already learned two styles of fan and the regular tai chi set. I was a bit hesitant on this one for concerns over the weight of the sword but decided to give it a try. I’m having to do it right-handed because it’s tricky for the teacher to teach a lefty…I’m sure she would try if it’s impossible for me…so far I’m okay but the movements have only just shifted to using my right hand so it’s early days. Also the advanced group is learning Beijing 24 which is a competitive type of tai chi that has been standardised between various styles. It’s different so far but kind of neat to be learning something pretty different.
Health-wise, I have been mostly okay but have a couple of issues. Some body hair loss was noticed recently and it’s quite obvious in one area so it seemed worth checking out. I don’t think the hair on my head is falling out more than usual although I could be wrong. Since it’s long, it always seems like I’m losing lots of hair. I had a whole bunch of blood tests run just over a week ago and a few came up abnormal although most weren’t terribly so. The worst affected is my iron levels. I don’t think I’ve had a normal transferrin sat level in nearly three years and the ferritin is also often below normal. The actual iron is more normal although right now it’s on the lowest possible normal it could be. Anyway, I’ve been offered an iron infusion to help that along (hopefully) and that’s scheduled on Friday and should take about an hour including the doctor visit. Hopefully this might get me back on track for the first time in a long while. The doctor I’m seeing suspects this might be the problem with the hair loss so it will be interesting to see if this helps things along in that area too.
The other tests that are in question are my vitamin D level (too low) and my parathyroid level (too high). Apparently the parathyroid level can be properly understood without a calcium test so I had that done today. The gp I’ve been seeing told me to take vitamin D tablets but I understand that it’s important to find out the reason for my parathyroid first…This doctor is young so I guess she has little experience in this area. I’m holding off on this until I know that my calcium isn’t high. My father has issues with his parathyroid and he has problems with his calcium being too high which poses lots of problems in treatment due to other medications he takes. I honestly have not heard much about parathyroid issues over the years, except for when my father had his. He has a tumor on his parathyroid that can’t be removed due to closeness to some major artery or something like that.
Which reminds me that a few weeks ago, I also had a blocked tear duct which got rather swollen all of a sudden and sent me off to see the doctor on a Saturday morning. That’s cleared up but it’s interesting because it’s a common issue in Sjögren’s syndrome and this is my first time experiencing it. Since that started, my eyes have been particularly dry so I am so glad to have artificial tears available.
I’ve been doing a lot more reading of actual books lately, mostly on my Kindle. I must admit I find physical books less appealing lately, especially at night when I need some light to read. I resisted the Kindle for a long time because I hate that it’s a proprietary format. But after trying other e-readers, I find it works better than others I’ve tried and, of course, it’s got a very established database of books. I find I am downloading lots of the free books and some of them are quite good. One of my latest books I finished was a light novel I found amongst a bunch of manga titles. I can’t recall if it was free or very low price…but it was a pretty long book and I really liked it.
Well that’s quite a long read and it’s kind of late so I will quit for now and hopefully remember other things I want to write about later on.
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Health and fitness
I’m pleased to share that I’ve made it to one of my longer term goals on my fitness and weight loss journey. I started back in August, I think, and I’ve lost just over seven kilograms which is pretty significant. I am not rushing the progress and trying not to get too tied to rigid routines because that seems to cause my downfall most of the time. My biggest improvements have been in my diet because I’ve been able to restrain myself from overdoing it a lot better lately than in the past few years.
My exercise has also been going pretty well too. I’ve been mostly cycling and walking for exercise up until now. I find I have a lot more stamina for climbing hills doing either and I can sort of keep up with the Scientist when walking with him. He walks really fast so I am still slow next to him even at my fittest….so he slows down for me and I speed up for him as much as possible.
I notice a couple weeks ago that I have a lot of sagginess in my arms so that motivated me to finally get on to doing some strength work after all this time. It’s still early days on this (only done it twice) but I started out using the Wii U Fit for some cardio work and then moved on to various other exercises including some using light weights. I’m mostly using a .5 kg dumbbell and it’s sad to see how even that is a bit of a strain after a couple of sets. Hopefully I will sort that out soon and be a bit more balanced overall.
My clothing size has definitely dropped in this time. I still need the same size tops but I can see it won’t be long until I move to the next size down. I’m just rather top-heavy so the fit isn’t quite right yet. On the other hand, the shorts I’ve been wearing have been just about sliding over my hips with almost no movement so I went out and got a couple pairs of shorts that are one size down. I do have some smaller ones here but I haven’t gotten down far enough to wear those yet.
I did have a couple instances in the last couple of months that seriously could have derailed my efforts. On one occasion I started out fine and I even felt as though I was exerting little effort for the first fifteen minutes. But then my heart started racing while climbing a hill and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to come down until I completely stopped riding when I stopped at some markets about half an hour from home (by bike). I walked around there and got a drink and then bought another drink along the way. I had made the mistake of forgetting to take water but that shouldn’t have caused the problem. Anyway, I started to feel better so decided to carry on with my ride and went to another suburb where I was again struggling with racing heart and struggle to get to the shopping centre there to get more fluids. I did feel a bit better but not particularly great to ride home. Fortunately the most direct way is a mostly downhill ride so I was able to coast most of the way and then go slowly the rest of the way home. I’m not quite sure why I had such a bad time of on that day because I didn’t feel unwell before I went out and I did feel unwell for a day or two afterwards.
Interesting thing is the next ride was totally opposite and was a good experience all around. It took me a few days before I tried to cycle again so it was a relief that it went so well that time.
Last weekend I bought an Apple watch, in part so that it would be easier to look at my stats while riding or walking instead of constantly looking at my phone. I’ve used it for cycling twice and it worked really well except for the fact the app I use somehow switched my activity to walking. I was able to change this before I stopped the app and it seems like it shows cycling as it should. I think this happened when the activity tracker accidentally started on the phone, which sent it to the watch, where something must have moved the digital crown and changed the activity there…and that made the change on the phone…sigh…will just have to be careful in the future about that. I don’t think there’d have been an issue had the app not started by accident.
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Walk in the park
Like most Wednesdays, I went for an hour walk in a park near where G (the guy I am a carer for) lives. I was a bit unsure whether it was a good idea to risk a walk because we’d had rain from mid-morning onwards. In the end it was just fine and no further rain reached me at all. I managed to go pretty fast today, with my first lap (kilometre) at 10.5 minutes and another of the laps was under ten minutes. The only time my laps went too long were when I stopped to take photos so I was keeping a good pace today.
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There were kangaroos
It’s been a long and anxiety-filled nightmare of a day. I know I’m among many around the world feeling the same and I guess there is some comfort in not being the only one. But it really was difficult. I think for the first time all the networks here had rolling coverage throughout the morning and into the afternoon. I don’t normally watch television much during the day but it was hard to break away from. The Scientist sent me off to refill a prescription in late morning and it was a case of taking up way too little time. When I returned I made the decision to get out of the house and away from media as much as possible. My destination was our local Whiteman Park to do a long bit of walking while listening to music on my phone.
This should have been simple enough but I realised just about the time I reached the entrance to the park that I’d left my earphones at home. I often can zone out while walking so the only course of action was to return home and retrieve the earphones. It’s not that it’s far away but it’s tedious to take the time to do that trip again. Just before noon I arrived at the park and found decent parking without having to weave through the many parking lots around the village centre. Once there I applied sunscreen and then set off. I realise it would have been more effective to do the sunscreen at home but better late than not at all.
My walk was on the longest trail, which as a short and long version. I’d done the short version, albeit in a long way (after taking a wrong turn) on Saturday but today I wanted to do a lot of walking. For the most part the walk wasn’t eventful. took along my camera and took lots of photos and listened to music. I tried to listen to a Crowded House album that I find pretty soothing to hear. Sadly I just wasn’t able to zone out even though the music was pleasing when I wasn’t distracted by angry thoughts. Once that finished I moved to an Augie March album that I’ve been listening too regularly on walks. It’s got some amazingly beautiful music but the subject matter can be rather unsettling. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. Strangely I found this music worked a lot better for me and the album runs over an hour so it kept me going for longer.
But despite the improvement the effect of music on my nerves, I was still quite agitated and often found myself in various states of mind that unpleasant. My stomach had been churning all this time and I’d been unable to eat anything all day. Still I didn’t feel hungry and I wasn’t even tired from walking after several kilometres.
A brief relief came when I came across some kangaroos near the Kangaroo Flats station on the park’s railway line. At first I only saw a couple but there were actually at least half a dozen within my sights. I even managed to take several photos and my trouble thought escaped for that minute or two that I was there. It was a rather blessed relief in a sense to feel the weight lifted.
The rest of the walk was fairly uneventful. I finished one trail and then went down another pathway to another part of the park. In the end I walked over nine kilometres and still didn’t feel very weary at the end of it aside from a bit of discomfort on the ball of my foot which was already irritated by too much friction on another walk.
I did eventually get a sort of appetite after forcing myself to eat a few nuts I keep in the car for emergency purpose (hunger sickness). And now it’s late at night again and I don’t even feel all that sleepy even though I got very little sleep last night. Hopefully I will be tired enough to sleep anyway tonight.
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Bicycle
Two or three weeks ago, I discovered the chain on my bike had completely dried out and was showing signs of rust. It was a particularly wet winter this year so I guess that may have contributed also. My bicycle is over ten years old and it rides reasonably well but it does squeak a lot, even after it’s been serviced. It’s also showing signs of rust on the body. Not terrible shape but could be better.
This bike wasn’t all that expensive although it wasn’t a cheap one either. I started to consider the value of a getting a new bike versus the cost of service and repairs. I have been looking around at the costs of bicycles lately and the first thing I discovered is the price hasn’t gone up as much as I expected. Also there are lot more casual bikes available and those are pretty much the same price as what I have. The only drawback I’ve found is they don’t have that many gears, seven being the highest on the ones I’ve seen. While I have never used all 21 gears on my current one, I do often use the second set of seven. But then I haven’t used them all that much lately. I probably could get by with the limited gears and I’d gain a rack on the back for storing packages plus a basket at the front. I have a basket already but it doesn’t hold all that much, which makes the idea of cycling to the shops less practical if I can only carry limited amounts of goods. This option really expands the amount of shopping I can bring back. Not to mention it allows more space if I take my camera along for the ride.
I found a model that I like quite a bit so my plan is to put aside money over the next few months and buy it once I’ve reached my goal. Meanwhile I have taken my bike to a local, independently run shop for a service and to see if the chain needs to be replaced. It’s interesting that this small shop charges a far more reasonable price than any of the bigger stores around. I rode the bike to the shop yesterday and walked back. It took me about 45 minutes to walk less than three kilometres which was pretty slow for me. A kilometre is usually about 11,5 minutes to start with and often goes down to 10 minutes when I’ve built up to a good pace.
On Sunday, I managed to walk 12 kms in just over two hours, which was a pretty good time for that distance. Also, it’s quite a bit longer than my usual walk. I normally walk from 6-8 kms at most so this was a bit of a stretch. My feet were pretty sore after that walk and my body was till a bit achy yesterday when I cycled, walked and then did 90 minutes of tai chi and tai chi fan. Some of my muscles were really feeling it when I got home last night.