Adjusting

I have probably written a million blog posts (or post-its) in my mind and they never seem to make it out of my head and onto this site. If you have followed me for a while, this is not new. I really hate how fast summer flew by. We didn't do some of our favorite things either. This summer just felt so busy and not as relaxing for me. Or maybe it's just something in me that's changed. I signed up for less art events this summer because last year felt too busy. I had to cancel one market due to really thick smoke from the Canadian wildfires. So I did one market in a neighboring town, a 2-day art fair and I have one more fall art fair thing where the street art will be auctioned off. We painted sailboat sails again so I mixed it up and did 4 impressions of works that I love.

There's a little "meet the artist" event the night before, with wine, snacks and a ferris wheel on the waterfront. Maybe that will be the perfect toast to end summer. Any well-laid plans to stick to a healthy diet while on time off (or the weekends really) got squashed with feeling like I just didn't have the mental energy to care. What's strange is, when vacation is over, I can still get back on track and leave any of the junk food behind. Honestly, none of it waa that satisfying and the carbs made me so bloated it was miserable. I do want to overcome this bad habit at some point. I had gotten really lax about 95% of my workouts being stretching/ yin yoga. My body has been hurting. I am pretty sure I am hypermobile. My knees and ankles are so bendy that I shock physical therapists when I go. So that means my joints are loose and things slip out of place easily. My knees and hips are doing a lot of clicking and snapping (clunking in some cases) and then sometimes I feel like the connective tissue doesn't glide over my bones correctly but gets stuck in an uncomfortable place and I have to manipulate my body to make it relase. When I get up in the morning, all I want to do is stretch everything because I am aching. But a couple weeks ago, Peleton sent me this message as soon as I opened the app, and it worked. No pressure, just progress.

How simply put. And I pushed myself to work through some crabby body parts and do some pilates core strengthening. It gave me a lot of positive energy and made me feel strong. It didn't take the pain away, and in fact, I ended up having a really bad low back issue earlier this month, where not only did it feel like something (IT band?) was trapped in a bad place, but it was pulling on my low back and the pain was really next level. It made me wonder if I'd damaged a disc. I tried to take it easy during that, but I was having issues with it while setting up and tearing down my 2-day art show, and that involves carrying heavy things, lots of bending, stretching and being on my feet for hours. I was walking like an old frail lady afterwards. My bed has been getting more and more uncomfortable, and it only made my hips hurt worse, so I finally asked my husband to help me rotate the mattress. The following morning, just as I was getting ready to take the dog out there was a huge, deep cracking sound right where my back hurt, something released in the most wonderful way and all at once, my back was 90% better! I will never take my back for granted again! So now my plan is strengthening my core so it can stabilize my joints. I am aiming to do strength training or HIIT 3 times a week. My desire to challenge myself is two fold. Of course the joint stability is one reason. The other is because my cholesterol has gotten quite high. When I had it tested in May, my provider wanted to put me on a medication. I asked to wait, get coronary calcium scoring done (which shows how much plaque is in your arteries) and retest in August. I was over the moon to discover I have zero plaque in my arteries! When I had my cholesterol tested again in August, it was during my week off, and I was not eating clean. My scores got a little better so my provider said she is willing to test one more time in November and see how it looks. I told her I will get better control of my diet. Cholesterol is partly controlled by sugars in your blood. Sugar makes your blood thick and sticky, and that's why it can harden in your arteries so easily. High cholesterol can often mean that you eat too many carbs or that your body doesn't handle glucose efficiently. I know my eating was pretty atrocious before my labs. Also, exercise helps burn extra glucose so it's not just cycling around gumming up your blood. Dr. Boz has a good video about it here: Anyway, I am back on track and making an effort with the goal to make my cholesterol look so good in November that the whole discussion will go away. Current weight is 176.4. I would love to get back into the 160's and stabilize. I would really love to see the scale drop even lower than that, but it feels like such a battle to just lose one pound these days, I am learning to adjust my expectations!