by Tish MacWebber | Mar 9, 2017 | Trust Your Gut
The names here may or may not reflect the person’s real name. If someone wants to remain unknown, we will choose a different name for that person’s story. The goal is to help people, and anonymity is a valid personal choice for contributors. I will use a person’s name only if they give permission to do so.
Here is the next addition to my own story, Trust Your Gut: Tish’s Story; Part 4
What do you do when the scale doesn’t move the right way, or it refuses to move at all? Do you yell at it, or kick it? Do you get a weapon of mass destruction? (See what I did there)? Do you hide it in the closet, or throw it into the garbage? What do you do? I mutter under my breath. And I think about what I have eaten in the last 24 hours. I wonder if I should go to the bathroom and try again, to see if it gets better. Not always. I have tried this, and it is a gamble. Sometimes it is worse the second time around.
A bathroom scale can be your best friend, your worst enemy or your most destructive obsession. We have all been there, those of us with weight issues. Watching it go in the right direction, up or down. Feeling ecstatic when it moves the right way and devastated when it doesn’t.
If you are on the high end of that scale, like me, waiting for the number to drop, it can be very discouraging to eat healthily, have no cheats, exercise, drink your water, and not lose weight. Or GAIN weight. Fluid in your body does fluctuate so that accounts for the small changes seen on the scale if you climb on it every day. In the morning, after you use the bathroom, buck naked. Right? Don’t you do the same thing? Isn’t that when we weigh the least, so it should show the best result? Before climbing in the shower, because someone said you retain fluid when you are in the shower. Wait, what? Really? Time to google that. The answers are conflicting, that can’t be true. So what gives? Why does this thing called a plateau plague each and every person trying to lose weight?
It can be muscle. When you are building muscle, the mass of muscle is heavier. What that means is that less muscle mass is needed to weigh the same amount as fat. Think of it in terms of a beach ball, and a medicine ball. The beach ball bounces and will ride on the wind. It would take many more beach balls on the scale to weigh five pounds, as compared to the same five pounds in one medicine ball. A pound equals a pound, but the density of the material used to make up that pound can vary in volume, because of that density.
Now think about moving around with the five pounds of balls attached to you. It is a lot easier to move with the medicine ball, even though it requires more effort to do so. Huh? Volume strikes again. It is the same five pounds, but the difference is like walking around with a cat in your arms versus trying to walk around in a puffy marshmallow suit.The cat may be heavy in your arms, and you feel a little pressure, but it is easier to move from sitting to standing and walking around while holding a cat. If you were alternatively covered in a suit of marshmallows, it would be sticky and puffy and it would be much harder to move around.
While we all try to decide if that analogy makes any sense, I’ll bounce the ball over to the how. When you have large amounts of fat, your body has to work very hard to burn off the fat. Think of it like cleaning the marshmallow suit off. You would have to scrub at it and wash it off and wash your clothes and spend a lot of energy to remove the residue. That is a lot of work and can seem for a long time like it is not worth all that effort. But if your five pounds is a cat, you put the cat down and walk away. You lose the extra weight more quickly. Your muscles burn off energy much more efficiently than fat does. If you are familiar with cats, they don’t always act the way you expect them to. They don’t always want to be picked up or put down. And they leave little bits of fur everywhere. If you think of the little tufts of fur as how you build muscle, you will understand that the muscle fibres get stronger as they build and grow, similar to the ball of fur you take off your clothing with a lint brush. It adds up, a little at a time. It takes more work to gather it all together. Sometimes it will surprise you how much cat fur there is when you take the time to gather it all up.
Weighing yourself can become an obsession, and it can be stressful to weigh in too frequently. When I find myself starting to be anxious about what the scale is going to show me, I know I need a break. If it isn’t moving, and I am working hard to make changes, I have to remember that I sometimes will show gains on the scale. It isn’t always bad. If the weight gain is from building muscle, it means I am on the way to another drop because more muscle burns through more fat faster. It is a good thing when it is happening for the right reason.
Back to my quick online research. I saw that you can gain wait in a shower. I saw that you can lose weight in a shower, and it is not because of urinating while in the shower. People actually wrote that. I did find out that if you have wet hair, especially if it is wrapped in a towel, you will weigh more after the shower if you step on the scale and forget the towel is in your hair. So I am going to keep to my routine, and leave the shower out of the equation. It seems to be the most reliable method for me.
One final thought. I would never recommend walking around in a sticky, puffy marshmallow suit while carrying a cat. Don’t try this at home. Ever. The results would be traumatic for you both.
by Tish MacWebber | Mar 4, 2017 | Weekend Warrior
This picture really made me laugh. It will be the picture for my new Blogging series, called Weekend Warrior. I am working on cleaning and organizing my home so that when I am ready to dive into writing my books, I will not have to worry about what is not getting done or what should be getting done.
I just had breakfast. I like to sleep in on the weekends. This means if I am motivated and working on my house and chore list, it continues well after dark. I am a night owl, but find the weekday schedule really helps me to stay on track with my health. So I am a part of the rat race, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, working woman. I do have a day job. The bills need to be paid. SO on a weekend when there are no plans outside of the house, I sleep in and go a little off schedule. I enjoy that. When we get a dog later this year, I hope it likes to sleep in on the weekends too. I realize that there will be necessary walks and wake ups with a dog to take them outside, but that doesn’t mean a nap won’t follow those little adventures.
I am breaking in my new coffee mug. It says, “Overthinkin’ and coffee drinkin’ ” it suits my life and my logo. It is a good size, and I purchased it last weekend on a whim. I saw it on facebook and had to have it. It is so “ME!” I will drink coffee from it while I write. It holds 16 oz of coffee, and that is a good start for my weekend coffee.
My new coffee mug. It says, Overthinkin’ and coffee drinkin’ on it. #WeekendWarrior
Plans for the weekend are developing, on the social side of things. Which means I have to make the most of the afternoon as I may be out this evening. Combining the things I don’t want to do with things I do want to do works out, somewhat. It can be counterproductive, too, though. If I am really on a roll, and getting things done on my list, then it is hard to find the motivation to keep going if I have to stop. Or sometimes I don’t start at all because I know I won’t be able to finish.
Sometimes I get a lot done, and sometimes I overthink the projects and that takes up all of my time. Music is a huge motivator for me. If the tunes are cranked, I find it hard to sit still. I like background music or TV when I am surfing the internet, or working on stationary projects, but to get me up and moving, the tunes have to be cranked.
Weekend Warrior. That is what I feel like when I am having a productive weekend. It doesn’t mean I am changing the world, or working on building or renovating anything. It does mean I am making progress on my lists, getting up and moving around, staying motivated, and having a little fun. Making the most of my free time, and getting that much closer to the goal of writing my books. Singing and dancing my way through the weekend is how I put on my game face. When I am Bouncing the House, I am getting the lists done, and that is exactly what weekends are for.
#WeekendWarrior
by Tish MacWebber | Feb 19, 2017 | Weekend Warrior
I made some resolutions at the start of this year. I am working at them, at my own pace. This week I feel like I am falling behind. We had a lot of snow early last week. I missed two days of work just digging out from under it. My husband, who normally does the shoveling, hurt his back, and is still recovering. So I did it myself. It was a lot of work, and the reason I missed the second day is because I spent more than 4 hours shoveling, and it exhausted me.
So I rested for 2 days, when I wasn’t shoveling. Eat; shovel; sleep; repeat; for 2 days. I didn’t get much done inside the house for those days. We managed. We averted the crisis of having no Pepsi in the house for my husband. It was a close one, though. He doesn’t enjoy coffee, he likes Pepsi. I enjoy coffee, and today, I am home without the car, so I can focus on what needs doing inside the house, and drink a lovely bucket of coffee.
I prep cook on the weekends. It is on my list of things to do. I need to get at the dishes and laundry. I want to finish the kitchen and move on to other rooms, but life happens. Other projects have popped up in the last month, so it was not a productive couple of weeks in my kitchen.
If you are following my blog, you are familiar with the Tish-ism in Bouncing the House. It is what I do. I crank the tunes and clean. This is in my plans for today. But where do I start? There is SO much to DO and only ONE DAY. I am a weekend warrior when it comes to cleaning, and someday, when I am more energetic or have things under control so that I only need a half hour a day in the week for maintenance house cleaning, that won’t be the case. I will be able to manage it this way at some point, and then I will have the time I need to focus on writing and crafts. What I WANT to do.
At the start of the year, I decided on three things as my resolutions. Work on me by living a healthier lifestyle, clean my house, really clean it, top to bottom, and write a book. I will not begin writing in earnest until the house is done. I will never get the cleaning done if I jump into writing and get lost in my creativity. I have a plan, but it takes dedication to stick to it and get it all done. One thing at a time, one project at a time, and one day at a time.
My creative mind travels in circles, and this can be distracting when I am working on something. I start loading the dishwasher, and go through the house to collect dishes. I find empty bottles and cans that also need to be relocated to the kitchen for rinsing and recycling. I fill the sink with really hot water, dish soap, and dishes that don’t go in the dishwasher. I wander into the bedroom and find laundry that needs doing. Get the laundry started. And realize that the dishwasher door is still open, the dishwasher is still not full and running, and the sink now has cold water with bubbles and dirty dishes in it.
So I add more hot water to the sink of dishes, and finish loading the dishwasher and take a break at my desk for a few minutes, only to realize that I lost track of time and the water in the sink, which was too hot when I sat down, is cold again and the dishwasher is finished and needs to be unloaded and the clothes in the washer need to be put into the dryer and a new load put into the washer but there is a load in the dryer that needs to be folded and put away. That was a long and busy sentence on purpose. It is demonstrating how I get in a loop.
Putting things away is a hard thing for me. I get so far with the cleaning and I just leave it for later which essentially is never and the clean clothes get piled up and the dishes are just used straight from the dishwasher so they pile up again as the dirty dishes can’t go into the dishwasher if there are clean dishes in there and you get the idea. I go in circles, constantly, if I let myself, and when I do this, the chances of me finishing anything are slim.
What do I do to fix it? Well, I am stubborn, and that means if I make myself do all the dishes, I can get them done. If I don’t start ten other things at the same time. Some of the chores in my list are the kind you start and have to walk away from, so I try to get them going first. That is also a trap. I need a break, and I lose three hours. I have no concept of time at all.
Turning the music up LOUD helps, as long as I don’t turn it down on a break. I can’t sit at my desk for too long if the music is loud. That is another tactic I use. It works if I don’t just grab the remote and turn the music down so I can spend more time at my desk procrastinating from the things I really should be doing.
Another thing I am going to implement today is a list. I find crossing things off of my list gives me a small sense of accomplishment, it means I finished that thing on my list. I make lists whenever I travel, and go over them several times to be certain that I don’t forget anything, and I cross items off as I pack. I don’t forget things when I have a list made. So I need to make more lists. This can take time and be distracting. I can put too many things down and never get back to the list, because I need to start a new one. Or I can just spend too much time making the list and get nothing else done. Not productive at all.
I think today I will be making more than one list. I also think I need to make lists more frequently until I get things back under control. After all, that is one of the goals here, to get things under control so I can let myself do the things I want to do. I will make two, on a small piece of paper. One for cooking and one for cleaning. If I just use both sides of a small piece of paper, I can flip it over, and not waste paper that way. If the list is small; maybe, just maybe, I can finish everything on it. And that would help to get me going in the right direction again, and help me get back on track. OK. Time to make my little lists and get my day going in the right direction! When I finish them, I have two writing projects that do need my attention. That will be my reward for getting the chores done, I can then work on some other projects that will make me feel good about working on them, not just to finish them, as I may or may not finish them by the end of the day. Getting time to work on them, though, will be a reward I can work toward. Progress is progress, and that is my ultimate goal for today.
by Tish MacWebber | Feb 16, 2017 | Trust Your Gut
Trust Your Gut is a series of stories about real people with weight issues, and complications arising from those issues. It will explain what the person is facing, what their options are, what they have decided to do to take action, and why they chose the path they are on. Each person’s story will be based on truth, so it won’t all be happy, but it will be real. The goal of this series is to get people talking about options that are available for people who have weight issues, on either end of the scale. If you would like to contribute to this series, there is a contact form linked on my Homepage for this blog. I know there are people out there that want to help people like them; as I do.
The names here may or may not reflect the person’s real name. If someone wants to remain unknown, we will choose a different name for that person’s story. The goal is to help people, and anonymity is a valid personal choice for contributors. I will use a person’s name only if they give permission to do so.
Here is Trust Your Gut: Tish’s Story; Part 3.
I love food. I love to eat. Sometimes I eat too much. Other times I eat the wrong things. I don’t allow myself to participate in guilt about eating. I have cravings. I give in to them. I find if I don’t; I go way overboard when I finally cave. I can settle for one of each flavour in a bag of candy. It’s better than having the whole bag.
I don’t always make poor food choices. I don’t always eat until I feel sick from overeating. I don’t always have more than one helping.
I do associate food with feelings. I think chocolate tastes like happiness. Most sweets do to me. Dessert used to make my day. I have started to tackle that problem. I am addicted to sugar, and it is bad for me. Sugar is a diabetic’s kryptonite, only you want it, unlike Superman, he fights to stay away from it. Even Superman needs help with his kryptonite sometimes. It’s not an addiction for Superman, but like me and sugar, it is better to keep far away from it, at all costs.
When I was growing up, there could never be enough Kool-Aid in my water. If it was so thick I had to chew it, that was how I wanted it. Currently, I have actually started reacting to things being too sweet. It was nothing I had experienced before, until recently, in the last two or three years. Age has to be a factor in this. Certainly, my change in eating habits has also contributed to this foreign concept. Not allowing as much sugar in my diet has increased my sensitivity, I think. Similar to the non-smokers reacting to the smell of cigarettes. A scent-free environment really highlights any scent that enters into it, and this might be what is starting to happen to me, with sugar.
I am not on the aspartame train. I have found that I feel better when I cut it out of my life. I am trying other sweeteners, I am using stevia, and erythritol which is also known as Swerve. It comes in granular and powdered forms, and I have started to figure out how to use it in food and drinks. Swerve does leave a cool feeling on the tongue but doesn’t have a nasty aftertaste. I used to drink a lot of pop. Now I can go days without it, and try to only have it as a treat. I didn’t like Zevia, a pop made with stevia, the first, second, or even the third time I tried it. But I kept trying it, and now I enjoy it. It has to be really cold, and then it is good. I haven’t gotten to the stage where I choose water over other beverages yet. I am working on that, too.
The Trim Healthy Mama (THM) plan I follow most of the time has me trying new things a lot. I like every recipe I have tried, and that is a big bonus. I fall short on a night like tonight, when I worked all day, and then came home to what the snowplow left in my driveway. The heavier snow that clumps all together at the end of your driveway, where it meets the road? Yeah, a foot of snow blocking me from parking in my driveway. My husband has hurt himself shovelling earlier in the week. 80 cm of snow (that is 2.62 feet) in one storm was a little too much for us to tackle. The storms of this week are being called Snowmageddon. We went at it together, taking turns with the one shovel, working our way from the step to the shed where the other shovels were. I got the dustpan out to putter with between turns. He pushed himself, and now he is starting to recover, as this was a few days ago. We got a guy with a tractor/snowblower rig to widen the driveway so I could dig the car out and move it. I was not going to be done before spring; otherwise. It stormed again last night, and I was up and at em this morning, and got myself shovelled out and drove myself to work. Then I came home. Ugh. I mean, yay, exercise. I spent an hour and fifteen minutes pushing and pulling the snow out of my driveway. Ten minutes for swearing, and another ten talking myself out of crying in a heap.
My back is not a happy camper, either. But I pushed through…the snow, the anger and the agony of it all…and came in for supper and a beer. I am going to have another drink too. I worked hard moving around a lot of freaking snow this week. My back is not amused, but I have not hurt it. I went to Zumba last night, and upped my activity levels for the week big time, up and over the top of all those snow mountains in my yard. So when I was being asked if I wanted him to make homemade pizza for supper, I told him to make it. Is it on the plan? No. Did I stay on plan by eating everything but the crust? Not a chance. Sometimes you have to make the easier choice because it makes more sense. I was on plan for the rest of the day, so this was not going to ruin everything.
One thing I learned with THM is that you don’t have to wait until Monday to start over. You don’t even have to wait until tomorrow. In 3 hours, you can be back on plan, working on your goals again. I like that. It works for me. When I see that I am not making progress, I know what I did that was not on plan, but I don’t beat myself up over it. I just start again, and every time I do this, I work a little bit harder to stay on plan. Eventually, I will be able to say no to more things that are off plan, and yes to more things that are on plan. Little by little, I am making progress. Someday all of those little things are going to really add up. So I keep working on me, and I let myself be human and take the easy meal sometimes. The important thing is for me to not take it every time.
I am 5’2 3/4″ tall. That snow bank is indeed taller than I am. Let’s hope there is no more snow on the way anytime soon!
by Tish MacWebber | Feb 12, 2017 | His & Hers
We are both home this weekend. He works one in three weekends, and this is his favourite, the three-day weekend. He has been off since Friday. I have every weekend off, and rarely go in for overtime on the weekend unless there is a need for extra cash or to make up for missed time.
I am on a mission this year to clean my house, so I can be guilt free when I settle in to write my book, and work on various craft projects. So I am working on a cleaning challenge, and an organizing challenge. I also have a plan for maintenance cleaning after the main cleaning is done. They say it goes quicker every year, and this is the year I plan to finish it.
I am not a hoarder (except when it comes to craft supplies; I am dreading the necessary purge of them), and I know how to clean. Laziness is my issue. Combine that with a poor sense of time management and a healthy dose of procrastination, and you get the mess my house is in. It is lived in, I can find what I need almost every time I need something, and I do enough to get by. I don’t feel comfortable with guests seeing the disaster zone. So I have taken it upon myself to get this place clean and tidy before I dive into my next creative projects.
I also go in circles, and am finding this is creeping into the cleaning and organizing schedule. Yesterday I just could not bring myself to continue the projects started on Friday after work. I am procrastinating the dreaded craft supply purge, even though I have decided that I will donate the items to the annual Relay For Life Yard Sale in support of my team from work in their fund-raising. I will be joining the team again this year. I am moving my craft supplies into my bedroom, out of the guest room. I have the cutest shelf that I bought for this project. Last weekend we got it assembled. Friday the old mattress was removed from the master bedroom, so we could get the new shelving unit in place. I bought plastic bins for it, and it really is pretty to look at. Now I am over thinking how to organize it. So I have stopped that project.
He went to work on the man cave yesterday. He put his new bookshelf in place Friday night, but needed bolts to complete his project. Yesterday he went out to get what he needed, and today the man cave looks a lot more organized and there is room to move in there. We can even sit on the fold down couch that doubles as a guest bed to watch movies in there if we want to. It hasn’t been cleaned the way I intend to clean in my challenges, but one thing at a time. I do not plan to clean it for him. He will have to do that room himself. I will make sure he knows what needs to be done for spring cleaning in there, and leave it to him.
Yesterday I asked him what he wanted to accomplish this weekend. He was going to putter in the man cave. I was OK with that. This morning, we are taking a bit of time to relax before diving back into the weekend projects. I asked him what his plans were for today. As expected, he wants to rearrange furniture for the new fish tank we bought a couple of weeks ago. The next question was to define my role in his project. I have been drafted to help lift and move furniture around. That is fair. So I am left to figure out what I am going to tackle today, when I am not moving the sofa and chair.
This is the progress in the man cave so far:
The bookcase on the right, and the shelf between the two bookcases that the TV is on are new. We both have a long way to go in finishing our projects, but progress is progress.
Last night I started cleaning and organizing around my desk. I wanted to just watch TV, and needed to feel like I was being productive. So I started. My office is in the living room, and I need to work on purging paper, and cleaning and organizing the desk and office corner. All areas of the house need this, so I am not wrong to find something that I can do from my desk. However, it is not getting the kitchen or the craft supply project finished, either.
This is where my creative mind needs to be put on the back burner for a bit. I NEED to finish in the kitchen. It is the first project in my larger, more in-depth challenge. I am also going to have to delegate some chores for my husband, or I will never get to write my books. He is going to get the list for the living room. He will be exempted from my office area, as I am not going to tackle the man cave. So he will get the responsibility of 3/4 of the living room. He doesn’t mind some chores, so if I pick the ones I don’t feel like I need to be in charge of myself, he is fine with pulling his weight in maintaining the household. Thank goodness! We both work outside of the home, so we need to team up to tackle things around here. Sometimes we growl at each other if we are in each other’s way while working on the same tasks, so we work better alone for some chores. Depending on what it is. I am fine helping move furniture around. He is fine pitching in when I need help. We do work well together, and can count on each other to get things done.
I am going to head back into the kitchen today. I really need to be puttering at it all week. I sent out a message that I may be needing help next weekend, as I grew up with sisters, and I am used to sharing the workload. My husband was an only child, and he is fine going at his own pace on chores by himself. He will be working next weekend. I don’t expect my friends to clean my messy house for me, not at all. An extra pair of hands is appreciated, but even more importantly, someone to chat with while I work, and help keep me from wandering off to procrastinate is what I really need. Sometimes, the music isn’t enough. When I feel like I am OK having a friend over, even if they bring their own craft project to work on while I am cleaning; it helps me stay on track. It also keeps me from starting ten projects at once; as I wander through the house. Yes, I find a way to go in circles, even though I live in a mini home. It is how my brain is wired.
