Betty Rocker

Last spring, I signed myself up for Betty Rocker's 30 Day Challenge.  I crushed it; getting the daily workout emails kept me on track and motivated.  At the end of the challenge, I started doing my own workout with the many exercise videos I have.

But then summer happened.  I think specifically, my place got too warm to workout (I live on the upper floor of a house and the heat definitely rises).  I had a plan to get a mat of some sort for the basement so I could take my workouts there, but just never got around to it.  And so the summer passed and I completely fell out of my fitness routine.

After the 30 Day Challenge was over, I continue to get emails from Betty Rocker.  I let them all pile up since May, so I spent a bit of time going through them all.  I love how her messages continue to be so positive and full of love.  Check out a few that I really liked:

• The 4 Pillars of Health - this one is great for showing you what really matters (and what to focus on if something happens to one of the four so you can stay healthy)
• It wasn't a blog post, but in one of her emails she talks about pressure and how it's okay if you miss a workout or whatever - don't beat yourself up over it, just do something to get yourself moving back towards your goals (and she stresses: not ALL the things, just SOMEthing) ;)
• You Are Awesome - this is an important message that everyone should read.  We need to stop comparing ourselves to others!
• How "The best of you is like the best of me - unique, doing her best, and #perfectlyimperfect ️"
• Forget "All or Nothing" - this one talks about small swaps you can make to build a healthier life for yourself.  You don't have to do it all at once.
• Your "Imperfections" Are Welcome Here - this one was particularly important to read because here was her response to someone who fell off the fitness bandwagon.  Sure the reasons are different, but this is exactly what happened to me.  So if, like Jess or myself, you've fallen off the fitness bandwagon, please read this - it'll make you feel way better (and help you get back into fitness!)
• Opportunities in Disguise - this describes a really neat tool Betty Rocker uses to deal with anything difficult.  I'm going to have to try it!
• This one isn't on her blog right now, but she talks about how you attract what you are, not what you want.  So it's your responsibility to take steps towards becoming the person we want to be so we can attract like-minded people.  It's rather empowering to think that you can change who and what comes into your life like that.

One thing that I really like about Betty Rocker is how positive she is.  Her main messages are about being happy and healthy, on the inside and out.  She's huge on being the best we can be, but loving ourselves with all our flaws.  Going through all of these emails has helped me feel a lot better about myself and how I fell off the fitness bandwagon.  Hopefully they will help me pick myself back up now, too! 

I also took a quiz I found on her site and found out that I'm a Cheetah - my time is precious and I can get overwhelmed by things, so I need to focus on making an efficient solution for both working out and eating right.  I got a couple of tips for what will be important for me to focus on, both for physical and mental health.

She also sent out a fantastic sounding recipe for Avocado Bean Dip that I'm rather excited to try! :)

Fitbit Found!!!

Holy crap - I found my Fitbit!!!

Someone found it at work on October 15th.  I found it in the lost and found and brought it home to see if it would sync with my account.  And it did!  From what I can tell, a Fitbit will only sync with the account it is linked to, so this has to be my Fitbit! :)

What's really neat is that it still has battery power, even though I lost it back in July.

Now that I have it again, I figure I might as well start wearing it again, right?  I still won't be caring about my exercise goal of attempting to walk 5000+ steps on five days out of every week since I haven't been tracking steps for the last few months (and I wasn't going to make that goal anyway), but I might as well try to get myself walking a little more, right?

Weight Update for Oct 25

So this was unexpected: the numbers have not changed AT ALL since last week.

weight: 205.4 lbs
fat percentage: 44.3%
hydration: 38.2%
muscle: 27.4%
bone: 10.8%
cal: 2319

Oh well.  At least I'm maintaining my weight, right?  :)

Hydro Cortisone Not a Good Barrier for Me

Last week I mentioned using hydro cortisone to hopefully protect my skin from the Freestyle Libre sensors.  It didn't work.  After the first day of having the sensor in, my arm started to get really itchy underneath it; I knew things weren't going okay.  Then last night the sensor started coming off.  I put a couple of band aids on to hopefully hold it in place, but after having a shower I knocked it completely off.  Looking at the skin underneath, it's not at all surprising that it came off; the skin is once again angry and there was some dried yellowish goo once again.

So inspired by that spot in the middle of the last skin patch, which upon reflection is probably the one spot where I used an alcohol swab over the Flovent, I applied Flovent and alcohol swabbed the whole area.  The new sensor is in and warming up; hopefully this one will go better than the last one did!!!

Skin Results from Last Sensor

Alright, so here's what my skin looked like when the last sensor came off:

This is me looking down at it. The more angry and gooey part is the top of my arm, the less angry section is closer to my elbow.

It was rather gross on the top part (it was leaking in part like the Sept 19th one was), but for some reason it was only a little bothered in the bottom part.  There was also a centre spot that was completely fine.  So I have no idea what was going on here.

I had to get a new Flovent, which wasn't ready in time for me to put a new sensor in, so I used a layer of hydro cortisone as a barrier.  I haven't tried that yet, so I was interested to see what happens.  Unfortunately my skin started itching within a day of having the new sensor in, so I don't have high hopes for hydro cortisone helping (which is okay anyway - I wouldn't want to use it long term since it can make your skin thinner).

Weight Update for Oct 18

I feel like I've been eating absolutely like crap since the weekend.  And it kind of shows:

weight: 205.4 lbs
fat percentage: 44.3%
hydration: 38.2%
muscle: 27.4%
bone: 10.8%
cal: 2319

I have been a bit more active though over the last little bit.  I'm really struggling to rebuild the exercise habit I had last spring, which completely fell apart during the summer when it got too hot.  I've managed to do a short workout two days this week so far, so that's a good thing; I'll have to push myself to get back to doing a short workout on most days.

Hilariously, today I did the cardio sculpt workout from Prevention's Shortcuts to Big Weight Loss.  And wow do I suck at coordinating my arms and legs at the same time.  I found repeatedly that I could do the footwork, but as soon as I added in the arms everything fell apart!  Lol oh well, at least I was still moving, right?

Weight Update for Oct 11

Last week was my period so I didn't bother to weigh myself then.  So here are my numbers from today:

weight: 203.2 lbs
fat percentage: 43.4%
hydration: 38.9%
muscle: 27.9%
bone: 10.8%
cal: 2306

Wow!  I'm especially happy with these numbers because over the weekend it was Thanksgiving.  I ate a bit more than normal over the weekend (and then have been eating leftovers all week).  This is also the lowest my weight has been since July; prior to that it was under 204 lbs in December 2017, but it always rebounds back up within the next week.  So let's see if I can keep this up for longer (or even better, continue the downward trend!)

Just to make a note of it for future, here are the other times I was under 204 lbs as noted on this blog:

July 11 2018
Dec 9 2017
July 18 2017

And I've been tracking my weight on this blog with my scale since October 15, 2015!

My Sensor Just...Failed?

Well that was unexpected.  I've been having so much problems with the Freestyle Libre sensors falling off my skin or causing rashes on my skin that I was completely unprepared for a sensor to just fail.

I've had issues with this sensor from the beginning: it was reading as a few mmol/L below what my regular glucometer was reading.  I thought it was going to sort itself out over the first few days, but it consistently got worse, reading as "Lo" for large amounts of time when I very clearly wasn't low.  Yesterday it was so bad that it read 6.5 mmol/L when I was higher than 14!  At 2am this morning, the sensor finally failed, telling me to replace it.

I left it on overnight, and just phoned Abbot Diabetes a little while ago.  They're sending me a replacement and told me it was okay to take it off now.  So here's what my arm looks like after about 2.5 days with the sensor and Flovent:

This sensor was only on for half of the time that the last one was on for.  I'm hopeful because my arm wasn't itchy under the sensor yet.  But it's still got the beginnings of a circular mark from where the sensor was so I'm not really sure what would have happened if it had stayed on longer.  I guess I'll have to try it again and see what happens next time.