Body Image + NFR 6WC Challenge 7/27-9/7

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Facebook Hiatus – Taking a Break From Social Media

I finally did it.  I acted on the idea that has been swirling in the back of my mind for more than a month now.  I changed my profile picture, my cover photos, and my settings… and I quit facebook.  For 30 days.  You can probably imagine why I would feel the need to take a break from Facebook.  You might even be reading this blog from your phone, from a place where the world is absolutely carrying on around you.  Or, you could be in the bathroom.  Can’t you be alone with your thoughts for even five minutes?

That’s the critique I gave myself, because I am on my phone, specifically on Facebook, CONSTANTLY.  Quite literally (not figuratively), I check my phone first thing in the morning before I get out of bed.  I’m not afraid to say that I bring my phone into the bathroom with me.  Everyone does it.  I check Facebook on the computer before I leave for work.  I check it again as I’m in my car, before I even pull out of the stall.  I check it after I park at work, just looking for something new that I might have missed.  I check it during the work day–it’s almost constantly in the background.  I check it in my car before I drive home from work, again in the parking spot at home, and then I migrate to my computer–and Jeff is on his–then we stare at our electronic devices in bed, then we kiss and fall asleep.

And why?  There is figuratively nothing worth looking at on my social media feed.  Good vs. evil, what state you should live in, what your vernacular says about you–and Buzzfeed! Gods, Buzzfeed.  What a time suck.

What am I missing?  Well, I don’t know–because it’s been this way for about a year or so.  I’m missing spending QUALITY time with my husband, I know that for sure.  I’m missing out on rich interactions with my friends because we’ve ‘interacted’ enough via facebook already that day.  The depth of my relationships is getting shallower and shallower.

Aside from relationships, I’m also losing out on productivity at work.  Do you think I can focus very well with Facebook taunting me in the backround?  3 new notifications! I must click them before I finish writing this e-mail.  Oops, I hear footsteps, better alt+tab.

I’m missing out on nature.  I try not to, but inevitably I’ll scroll through facebook while I’m out for a walk.  Someone honked at me while I was out for a walk the other day and I assumed it was some jerk from the high school judging me again.  Turns out, it was my neighbor.  If I hadn’t had my nose buried in my phone, I could’ve waved at her in a friendly manner instead of throwing my hands out in exasperation and shouting “What?!”  And for what?  Another Grammarly update saying that people on the internet will still correct you if you make a typo.

So, I’m calling it quits–for 30 days.  I want to WILL regain some of the depth to my most important relationships.  I want to WILL be present in my day to day interactions.  I want to WILL be more focused and productive at work.

 

I think that the hardest part of this challenge is that I am going to New York City in a few weeks.  There will be brand new experiences–sights, sounds, friends, and photos that I’m sure I’ll be tempted to immediately upload onto social media.  And selfies! Oh my goodness, the selfies.  The thing is, though, before social media, I actually cherished my photos.  I looked back on them, I printed them out, I scrap-booked them, and if you were a special friend, I’d print a copy for you too.  Maybe I’d even put it in a really cute frame.

Just imagine how much more vibrant my memories will be if I can actually live and experience them rather than ‘capturing them for posterity Facebook.’

I imagine that I’ll just be more cognizant of my choices, take fewer photos, live more of my life than I put on the internet.

 

Have you ever taken a hiatus from social media?  What did you take away from it?  

 

P.S. I still plan to blog during this time, so don’t expect radio silence after I *just* got back  ::wink::

 

My Paleo Plate

I realize that the blog entry that I published last night  kind of went off the rails.  There was so much more that I wanted to talk about!  It was late at night, though, and I was probably bouncing back and forth between various web pages an the blog.  Today’s blog post is kind of an extension of that, but it’s much more organized and thought out–I even made an outline for it…  Part of what prompted me to come back and to write about my own experience with going gluten free was a rather harmless post about a trip to costco.

Who knew there was such a backlash against gluten free?!  I was flabbergasted but this isn’t exactly a friend of mine, and his friends and followers are not my friends and followers, so I decided not to waste any more of my time justifying to them why Gluten Free is a valid lifestyle choice–and that it doesn’t necessarily have to be full blown celiac disease to cause someone to start avoiding gluten and other potentially harmful/hard to digest foods.

As many of you know, I’ve been dealing with chronic back pain for about two years now.  As I type this, there’s what feels like a knot under my right shoulder blade and my whole back feels stiff.  It’s my new normal.  This isn’t even enough to complain about.  When most people toss and turn at night, they do so without really realizing it.  For me, I have to sit all the way up and turn over so that I don’t torque my back trying to just jostle into place.  There are times when I wake up in the middle of the night, or in the wee hours of the morning in back pain and I have no choice but to stay up because there’s no going back to sleep at that point.  If it’s really too early to get up, then, my poor husband, gets woken up because I’m in such pain.  He wakes up when it hurts too bad to breathe right, or when my back pain brings me to tears–and he’ll get up, without complaint, and offer me ice packs or back massages to try to ease the pain.  That will work just enough to take the edge off.  I try to let him go back to sleep and then I generally go out to the couch to sleep so that I don’t have to lay on my back.

Two years of that.

I have tried to find out what’s wrong with my back–I went to a physician, who referred me to physical therapy–I did that for a while before I was referred to Chiropractic.  I’ve been going to the chiropractor at least once/week for the past year and a half.  It has helped tremendously in reducing the severity of the pain and I haven’t had many episodes of spasms since starting chiropractic.  The problem is that I’m still having to see a chiropractor weekly if I want to avoid a build up of pain in my system.  Once, while my chiropractor was out of town for a conference, I had to go about a week and a half, maybe two weeks without an adjustment–and my back locked up so tight and spasmed so much that I gave in and called my physician for muscle relaxers.  I took them once.  I slept the entire night through without tossing and turning–but when I woke up the next morning, my back hurt so bad from being in the same position the whole night that it took almost all of the next day to start feeling normal again.

And that–is the key.  My back feels better when I use my standing station at work (provided I have the right shoes on that day).  My back feels better when I move.  I talked to my physician about this during last year’s physical.  It was a feminine exam and so I told her about my fears–how am I supposed to start a family with my back this way?  How can I be reliable and take care of an infant if my back hurts so bad that I can’t even breathe?  And do you know what she told me?  She said “Try paleo.”  I disregarded her at the time because I was stuck on oatmeal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and dinner usually involved pasta with mixed veggies and some meat.  I should’ve listened to her back then.

Recently, I came across Nerd Fitness. As I started reading, I started hearing about the benefits of the paleo diet–they’re what you expect from any diet–more energy, better nutrition.. The part that was different, for me, is that it wasn’t specifically designed for weightloss, it was designed for better overall health and well being.  That’s what I need.  I need health and well being.  So, I hopped into the chat rooms in NF.  I talked to a few members there about their experiences with Paleo and I heard about reduced pain, reduced acne, increased energy and stamina.  I decided to give it a try.

Searching online for paleo plans will turn up any number of results.  It quickly became apparent that no one really agrees on what Paleo should really consist of.  Some sites say no eggs, others say no dairy, all of them say no legumes but they don’t all agree on what a legume is.  It’s enough to make your head spin.  Finally, I stumbled upon two very valuable resources.  The first was linked yesterday as the “Beginners guide to the paleo diet” by Steve Kamb.  The other is Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo.  There’s a forward by Robb Wolf (not Stark), and the book dives into the science behind the nutrition.  I’m reading about leaky gut right now, which is where there are foods that are harder for your body to break down and they may ‘leak’ through the gut–they’re seen as potential invaders and it triggers an immune response.  In fact–the majority of the book is explaining the science behind the nutrition in terms that I can understand.  I find myself nodding along and saying ‘that makes sense.’

 

Since I’m not finished reading the book, and because change is very difficult, we’re not 100% paleo in our house.  Both Jeff and I still eat dairy in the form of yogurt and cheese, but we’ve swapped our milk out for coconut milk.  The muffins in the picture above were made with coconut flour and they were so delicious.  I may make them again this weekend.  The pumpkin pancakes in the upper left of the collage have no flour whatsoever and taste like pumpkin french toast.  They’re amazing.  Although Paleo has a list of foods to avoid that includes peanuts, it’s hard to find trail mix that doesn’t have peanuts in it, so we still have the occasional peanut.  We eat a lot of almonds, and I like to eat sunflower seeds.  We do a lot of batch cooking on the weekends in order to prep for the week ahead.  Being on Paleo means that you have to make your own food because the biggest overarching message is to get away from all of the highly processed, genetically modified, unnatural foods.  It’s pretty similar to the Whole Foods diet and the like.  Unfortunately, this means that we’re shopping for freggies every weekend, and stocking up on meat when we can.  Our grocery bill (for 2 people) has been averaging to be around $450-500/month.  I think that there’s a better way to do it, and there are ways to save money,  so I have confidence that this figure will come down once we get some consistency.

The first month that we were successfully paleo for the most part, our grocery bill was over $600 for the month.  I freaked out because “we don’t have that kind of money! This plan isn’t sustainable!’ Then Jeff pulled up the rest of YNAB and showed me that the month prior, we had spent $200+ on restaurants and $200+ on lunch and $100+ on “spending money” that included food.  The month we were successfully paleo?  $90 on lunch, $100 on restaurants.  So, we have the money, we’ve just been using it to buy the convenience food items that are so readily available in our culture.   Going Paleo just means a reallocation of the funds to foods that are worthy of being bought.

My next step in this Paleo adventure is to tackle the elimination diet.  I need to figure out what in my diet is causing the chronic inflammation.  Is it gluten? Legumes? FODMAPS? sugar? Something else?  It’s going to be difficult and there will be a ton of prep work involved, but I think that I can ‘suffer’ for about a month if it means improving my quality of life in the immediate future, and potentially prolonging my life in the long run.

What are your thoughts on the gluten-free craze?  Have you ever heard of paleo before?  Tell me about your experiences.

Guess who is almost 240 again? :(

I have a scale in my bathroom and, occasionally, I will weigh myself to make sure that things aren’t getting totally out of hand. Well, I’ve been hovering around 233 for the longest time.  I was STUNNED to step on the scale this morning and see 237.6.  I’m so distraught.  I don’t know of any solid reason for what feels like such a sudden gain.  Sure–I could cover it with a blanket statement about holidays, but I really didn’t feel that off the rails this season.   What’s more is that I’ve actually worked out 3x so far this week with a 4th planned for later today.

There’s nothing to it but to do it, though.. here’s to starting over.  Again. 😦

I’ve already got Iaido to keep me busy on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  I’m adding more workouts throughout the week, and I need to track again for a while.  Tracking is going to include measuring until I can actually fit into my jeans again.  This is a bit ridiculous.

You asked: here it is! MegsFitness on Facebook!

Hear ye! Hear ye! From this day forward, let it be known, that MegsFitness, and MegsFitnessPhotoTracker are now on Facebook!

Megsfitness

Like, follow, and share your story with like minded people 🙂

p.s. Erin – Challenge accepted 😉

Married life has swallowed me whole…

While I’ve been updating my food-tracking blog several times daily, I’ve been neglecting this blog something fierce.  And what has been taking up so much of my time?  Nothing, really.  I wake up, go to work, work my bum off, come home, work on cross stitch, catching up on Gossip Girl, or expanding my pinterest boards, study, go to school, try to learn how to drive a stick shift* and read books.  It’s pretty ho-hum, actually! … But I like it.  Life is good, and I’m going to cherish it while it lasts.

I’ve been causing a bit of mayhem on Facebook… pushing my political views on anyone who doesn’t agree with me.  Bleh.  Who knew we’d have to deal with this before the presidential debates started up?  I thought we’d have a nice 4 year break… nope.

I also cause mayhem when I over-share the type of shenanigans that me and my brother get into:

 

Seems legit….

Haha… Work is the same as usual.  The only thing that’s pretty awesome is that I’ve got over 100 followers on my other blog and to celebrate, I’m doing a ‘Happy Hundred’ challenge where I am working out for at least 10 days for 100 days since I got my 100th follower…. Turns out that’s until January 1st 2014 🙂  Serendipitous.

 

To help me reach my goals through the winter..[Pipe down, Stark, we all know winter is coming…] Jeff and I got a BOSU ball and a jump rope 🙂 So far, I’ve gotten at least 1 ten-minute workout in… while inflating the BOSU with the hand-pump 😛

*Jeff and I got an Audi a few months ago and while it was a great deal because it was marked down, good financing, paid off my car, etc.. there’s just one itty bitty tiny little problem:  I can’t drive it.

 

The Audi is a stick shift.  A manual transmission. A Standard transmission.  Three-pedals, kills the car if you do it wrong, shuddering death-trap of a stick shift.  And he drives it like they’re linked telepathically and all he has to do is think and it responds.

He was trying to give me a driving lesson today and I should not have gone out–it was already a rough day.  I was able to get the car going from a level surface, and cruised around the neighborhood 1st, 2nd, 3rd, oops, dead-end, neutral, park, reverse, 1st, stop-sign on an incline, shuddering start, stall, attempt # 1, attempt #2, 4-ways, concerned neighbor, attempt #3, car is smoking, I quit.

Heh.

I’ve been driving an automatic for 10 years and it’s really not that easy for me to pick up the skills needed to keep the car going smoothly.  It’s half mine, though, so I’m determined to figure it out.  Any tips/tricks would be welcome in the comments below 🙂

 

TED Talks – Eli Pariser: Beware Online “filter bubbles”

I don’t think that I mentioned it, but school is back in session for the summer. INFS1000 [Aka: Information Literacy and Research Skills] is a required course for my degree, but I am taking it a little out of order. See, last semester, I took ENGL1111 – an English course which primarily involves writing a college-level research paper. INFS1000 teaches you how to do research for a college-level research paper. For some reason, INFS1000 is *not* currently a prerequisite for ENGL1111. I could be bitter and upset that I went in “blind,” or, I can be happy that I passed ENGL1111 with a “B” and hope to skate through INFS1000. I have been horribly dissatisfied with my original instructor and felt lost about what to do about it.  Like any millennial with a problem, I took to Facebook and learned a thing or two:

After seeing my worst fears confirmed by other students (and the instructor flat out refusing to meet or chat with me) I made the decision to swap instructors.  It’s not yet confirmed by the Dean of admissions, but I am in LOVE with the second instructor that I’ve experienced.  Her syllabus is well organized and she was fully engaged and interactive. She went out of her way to help me get the documentation submitted to transfer to her class, added me to the group already, and has been sending me e-mails of things that are going on in the online classroom until I can gain access to the online classroom from the Dean.  I have given up on my original Professor and fully embraced my new one.  She, unfortunately, is not on ratemyprofessors.com, but she would be worth adding just to rave about.

One of the things that I’ve done this week as part of her course material is to review the video that follows.  It’s a TED Talk about something called “Filter Bubbles.”  You know how Google ads and the like are “tailored” to what it thinks you want?  Yeah, that type of customization can have unintended consequence and cause collateral damage.  Check it out, and leave your thoughts below: