Weight Updates for April 15 and 23

Here are my last two weight updates:

April 15:

weight: 234.2
fat percentage: 57.7
hydration: 29.0
muscle: 20.7
bone: 10.4
cal: 2436

April 23:

weight: 234.2
fat percentage: 54.8
hydration: 31.0
muscle: 22.2
bone: 10.4
cal: 2436

I'd like to note that both of these were taken after I started swimming once a week (I started that on April 9th). So I am hopeful that the drop in fat percentage and the increase in muscle I saw between the two weeks is from that, and will continue with the weekly swimming sessions. :)

Swimming!

My partner and I started swimming a few weeks ago! We're planning to go weekly, mostly on Thursdays (though if something is happening on Thursday we're hoping to just go a different night....like we did last week). It's felt so good getting back into the water on a regular basis - I love swimming, and I love that he's coming with me, too. :)

So far we've gone three times. The first week I did 12 laps total, and treaded water for 3 minutes. The second and third week (today), I did 19 laps total and treaded water for 4 minutes. I've been doing different strokes in chunks as a way to help me keep track of how many lengths I've done. My intention is to do, in this order, 1 lap of:

• Breast stroke
• Elementary back stroke
• Side stroke (I tread water for one minutes during this stroke)
• Front crawl
• Back crawl

And then repeat. I used to do something like this when I was swimming a lot years ago, too, but I never wrote down the exact order of the strokes back at that time. It was probably almost exactly what I'm doing now though. I also always finish off with one lap of just kicking, and one lap of sculling. I find it a nice and relaxing way to end off. :)

Unfortunately I haven't been doing well with the front crawl so far, so I've been substituting back crawl for that length as necessary. This isn't surprising though - front crawl is hard and takes a bit to build up to in my experience (it's also one of my least favourite strokes, lol, so I'm not in a hurry to be doing a lot of it). Last week I didn't do any front crawl, opting instead to try to do two back-to-back back crawl laps in an effort to build some lung capacity. This week I went one way doing front crawl, then back crawl on the way back. I noticed today that I'm having weird trouble with the breathing for front crawl - normally you do "1, 2, 3, breathe" (do three strokes with your arms while blowing the air out of your lungs, then take a breath on the third stroke). But I was consistently blowing air out of my lungs for two breaths then just stopped for some reason. I'm thinking that I'll do the same front/back crawl lap next time and see how everything goes; maybe my breathing will improve once I build up my lung capacity and endurance a bit more.

I also realized that by doing the strokes in this order, I'm doing an explosive/fast lap (back crawl) then slowing things down again. I planned it this way to give myself a break in-between the fast laps, especially as I build up endurance again. But this was also a recommendation made to me many years ago during my time on my high school's bike team: to build endurance, go really fast for a minute, then slow it down for 10; repeat. I'm not sure how long the whole set of strokes takes me to get through, but it's got to be close to ten minutes; hopefully it will help build my endurance in the same way as it did while biking. :)

I'm not sure what I'm going to do during my period yet....I might still go to the gym but just use the machines if I don't feel like going in the pool. But we'll see - it will probably depend on how I'm feeling on the day (and how heavy my period is).

Weight Updates and Measurements

Here are my last few weight updates:

Feb 24:

weight: 232.0
fat percentage: 54.5
hydration: 31.2
muscle: 22.3
bone: 10.5
cal: 2423

Mar 12:

weight: 232.0
fat percentage: 54.4
hydration: 31.3
muscle: 22.4
bone: 10.5
cal: 2423

Also, I haven't taken my measurements in a long, long time, so I thought it would be good to note them here:

Bust: 43.7 inches

Waist: 42 inches

Hips: 48 inches

Squat Challenge Update!

I started my squat challenge in early February, and am working on my third week. As I said in my first post, I started doing just five minutes of accumulated squatting on that first week, then progressed to ten minutes of accumulated squatting on week two. For week three, I decided to continue with ten minutes of accumulated squatting because I didn't feel ready to go up to more time yet; I'm thinking that things are going okay, and I'm going to move up to either 15 or 20 minutes of accumulated squat time (I haven't decided yet). 

Two weeks in, I still need to elevate my heels. But I noticed that they seem to be overall staying lower to the ground now in a squat (I noticed that using the yoga blocks isn't very comfortable now - I need to find something a bit lower I think). I can also sit okay in a squat for around 3-4 minutes, but getting up to 5 minutes at a time starts to hurt. 

I also discovered that I need adequate rest time between rounds of squatting right now; two days ago, I forgot to fit any squatting in earlier in the day, so I did a round of 5 minutes, rested for 10-20 minutes (I didn't pay attention to how long, I just know it was a bit, but not super long), then squatted again for another 5 minutes. By four minutes in on the second squat, I was hurting! I pushed it to the fifth minute because I didn't want to have to do another squat that night, but that was a mistake; I was sore for awhile after finishing. So yesterday I did three smaller squats (making it to over 11 minutes!) just to split it up more. That helped a lot - I wasn't sore at the end. :)

It'll be interesting to see where I'm at in another week or two! I've already seen some changes and can sit in a squat for longer than when I started. :)

January to Feb 20 Weight Updates

 Whoops, I haven't done a weight update in a bit...

Jan 22:

weight: 235.0
fat percentage: 55.9
hydration: 30.3
muscle: 21.7
bone: 10.4
cal: 2439

Jan 23 (to see if there was a difference):

weight: 233.8
fat percentage: 54.3
hydration: 31.4
muscle: 22.4
bone: 10.4
cal: 2433

Jan 29:

weight: 232.8
fat percentage: 54.8
hydration: 31.0
muscle: 22.2
bone: 10.5
cal: 2427

Feb 12:

weight: 231.4
fat percentage: 54.2
hydration: 31.4
muscle: 22.4
bone: 10.5
cal: 2419

Feb 20:

weight: 233.2
fat percentage: 55.0
hydration: 30.9
muscle: 22.1
bone: 10.5
cal: 2429

I'm not sure what's up, but I've been feeling uncomfortable in my pants lately. My weight and fat percentages seem to be remaining around the same, so I'm not really sure what's going on now. I'm going to keep an eye on how I feel and see how things go.

Squat Challenge!

I attended a Moves Method webinar today, where the host, Vanja, recommended to everyone that we do a thirty day squat challenge. She recommended that you start off on week one with ten minutes of time in a squat, proceed to twenty minutes on week two, and thirty minutes on week three. You don't have to do this time all in one go either; spend a minute or two a few times a day until you get to your total.

I've been wanting to improve my squatting ability for awhile now (I purchased Karin Dimitrova's Deep Squat program this fall and was working on it until I started doing physio; I stopped working on the squat in favour of spending time on the stretches my physiotherapist gave me). I've been hearing that squatting is both a natural human position, and really good for you to be using. So I decided to spend the next 30 days adding some deep squats to my day. I'll still be working on the stretches and strength exercises my physiotherapist recommended, too. 

I'm going to start my challenge a little easier than the Moves Method one though: I'm going to start week one with a five minute accumulation, then go up to ten minutes for week two. I'm not in a rush, and want to build some trust with my nervous system, so hopefully starting small will be a great way to do so.

I already succeeded in doing over five minutes today, though I did a little too much at one time (I did slightly more than four minutes, but had to stop because my legs got sore!) - tomorrow I'm going to try to keep more in the one to two minute range at a time.

Vanja also recommended you do a thirty day hanging challenge; I'll save that for next month.

Possible Allergy?

The other night I woke up around 5am with a really sore stomach. This isn't the first time I've had this happen, though it hasn't happened super often (maybe once every month or two, and it just started happening in the last six months or so). So I'm going to document it here, along with a list of things I remember eating the day before; hopefully I'll be able to figure out what's triggering this (and avoid it in the future)!

So here's everything I can think of that I ate yesterday:

• Morning:
• Smoothie 
• Afternoon:
• Gatorade - regular (the red one)
• Apple Cider from Vanderwees (two glasses)
• Dinner
• Meatball sub from Arnikos
• Wine - Pinot Grigio tetra (three glasses spread over the evening)
• Oat milk
• Caesar salad (croutons from Olive Garden, cheese, Kraft Creamy Caesar dressing)
• 1 deviled egg
• 1 revello
• Evening (around 10:30pm):
• 1 no sugar added candy (watermelon)
• Lays Sour Cream and Cheddar chips
• Gatorade - zero (the purple one, about 1/2 of it)

Some of these things I don't normally eat (like the candy and the revello), so I doubt they are the culprits (unless it's a fluke that they are this time).  Other things I eat just fine most days (like the smoothie and the oat milk). So my biggest suspects at this time are: the wine (though I have had wine at other times and been fine. Maybe it's a question of amount?), the chips (they were late in the day), and the Gatorade Zero (also late in the day. Maybe my stomach doesn't like the purple, or maybe it doesn't like mixing Gatorade Zero with wine?)