This was another difficult week. I have not felt well all week long. I've had a headache pretty much since Monday evening and I haven't slept well in two weeks either. My goal is simple to try to reach 2500 steps per day and if I can get some zone minutes in there by walking that's great. If not, well that's okay too. I'm being gentle on myself. I just feel like one gigantic poo ball. I have a very very long segment on anxiety below. PS> I know I dropped the ball and it didn't release on Sunday like it was supposed to. Frankly, my anxiety has been down right crippling and doing this wasn't an option. Hopefully, I'm on the way to recovery because I felt like getting this done this morning.
Not a pretty picture and maybe I can edit this later to include a picture, but I walked 21,458 steps this week. Sunday 3330 Monday 5383 Tuesday 3350 Wednesday 3209 Thursday 2055 (did not make it, but I wasn't feeling well) Friday 3651 (anxiety pacing) Saturday 480 (yep. I barely moved, but I'm being kind to myself) Picture it | Anxiety is a little funny looking creature with tentacle fingers. Anxiety is always around, but if I put my foot down and utilize tools to get rid of anxiety then it doesn't turn into a panic attack. Anxiety is one of those things just waiting for an opportunistic moment to strike and boy did it strike yesterday. I could get into the whys, but the reasonings are so long. HISTORY | I had undiagnosed Lyme Disease FROM 1995 TO 2007. I would get these episodes that appeared in every sense of the word to be anxiety panic attacks, but I knew in my heart they were not. Doctors would perform test after test and ultimately say that it was anxiety. Ultimately, I decided to give the meds a shot. The medications really didn't take care of most of the issues. Sure it took care of the anxiety portion, but it didn't take care of the physical symptoms I was having on a daily basis because get this they weren't anxiety induced! I had a couple of full blown panic attacks in which the medications DID reduce my physical symptoms. I started to learn which symptoms were panic and which were not panic. FRIDAY ATTACK | I had a trigger and anxiety has been knocking at my door all week long. Friday afternoon I opened the door and let panic walk right in and enter my body. The first 30 minutes or so I wasn't even sure what was going on, but then it hit me. I needed instinct to kick in and use tools that I used over a decade ago to help me because my husband wasn't home and wouldn't be for a couple of hours. I never let people in when I'm in the middle of an attack because I don't like people to see or hear me that way, but back in probably 2005, What's the harm in letting someone know when you're having a panic attack and allowing someone else help?" I reached out to two best friends by 5pm and had help until my husband could get home. I texted my very best friend to ask if he could take a phone call because I was having a panic attack (I knew he could possibly be at work and it that was the case he wouldn't be able to take the call). He was available. I talked with him from 5:22 until my husband walked through the door. I have a whole list of things that happened while I was on the phone with my bestie, but he kept me leveled down when things were getting out of control. We've known each other for 30 years. He called me when his Mom died on February and I started pacing immediately. My husband went into fix it mode and drove me over to his house so that I could greet the family when they arrived home. We've seen each other on our worst days and I knew that he could keep me relatively calm even if it meant over 2,000 steps while talking to him. Men aren't always good at picking up clues, but when I'm in this mode it's like my husband goes into super hero mode. Anxiety makes me lose my appetite. I've not been hungry for a few days so I should have known what was the culprit, but I didn't recognize it until it was too late. He began fixing me something to eat. He knows me and knows I won't eat a big meal, but also knew I needed some protein so he grabbed a pork chop and started baking it. At this point I had walked over 3,000 steps and fatigue was setting in even though I was till shivering & tremoring. I walked to the bedroom and put on my 15 pound weighted blanket. He recognized at this point that I was ready to put the tools into place. He asked if I wanted "You & I" which is this CD I used to have where this lady named Lucinda walks through a guided breath situation as well as two other parts. He had put it on a mp3 player many years ago and knew where I stashed it. He put that together and started playing it. Then he turns off the lights. I ask him to lay down with me. I then realize I'm getting very very sleepy and tell him if I fall asleep before the food finishes, just let me sleep. However, I did not. I wound up eating maybe 1/3 of the pork chop, but that's better than nothing. I decided by 8pm that going to sleep was my best option and because I had some pain (which was part of the trigger actually) I decided Tylenol would be my best bet. I contemplated whether or not I should take another medication which typically would put me to sleep in about 15 minutes. My husband figured out how to loop the Mp3 so that Lucinda would be talking all night long. that way if I woke up (and I did) that I'd hear her talking about deep breathing or whatever else and focus on that an fall back to sleep. Likely due to the talking I didn't get much deep sleep or much REM, but at least I did get SOME sleep. Previous panic attacks have lead to vomiting in the middle of the night and I didn't vomit. I will call that a win. The trigger is still happening, but we have a game plan on how to tackle it. The game plan can't happen until Monday and we might have to talk a lot about the trigger this weekend which may result in more attacks, but at least now I remember my tools. It may not take away anxiety, but at least it gives me some control.
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I decided NOT to do a video this week. I am so far behind in filming that I need to cut myself a break. Furthermore, I decided on Wednesday that it's much more important that I get all the laundry done and kitchen deep cleaned than it is for zone minutes. I've decided that if I can reach at least 2500 steps by 2pm then I can skip the work out. However if I fail to reach 2500 steps by that time, then I will work out for 30 Zone Minutes at 2pm each day (Wednesday to Saturday). I doubt I will get my zone minutes this week, but it's far more important to get the house clean. I decided this after Monday & Tuesdays work out.
This week I got 24,691 steps. This is a giant leap over the last month where I've only been averaging 15 to 16 thousand steps a week. I did not meet my zone goal of 150, but I did manage to get 82 zone minutes which is better than none. I need to figure out a way to get those 150 zone minutes AND steps, but it's one step at a time right? Pun intended.
The Fit Bit app still isn't reading IMPACT right. I feel like they must be working on it because the Impact moved on the app in front of the heart, but who knows. This was a great exercise week. I only did 5 out of 7 days of exercise, but met my goal for zone minutes for the week.
SATURDAY | OCT 17
No purposeful exercises were done on this day, but I did get nearly 5500 steps in the day when went window shopping at Lowe's as well as grocery shopping for Ace Plus Blender Season 2. This more than doubles my goal of walking. This was a good week overall. I reached my goal of 150 Zone minutes in only 5 days. It normally takes me 6 days to reach that goal. I blew by that by an additional 14 zone minutes. From this point on, I'd like at least 2 of my elliptical work outs to reach 1,000 steps per week. My elliptical goal is at least 70 minutes per week. I'd like to do at least 2 Physical Therapy Days twice a week. I'm okay with an extra day of rest if I meet my goals in 5 days. The goal during the third week of PT/Elliptical Fitness was 150 Active Zone Minutes. Mrs. Like really slacked on Friday & Saturday of Week 2 so she decided to give a 10 minute Zone boost on Sunday instead of resting. This week was a roller coaster of emotions & physical health. There were a couple of days that I really wasn't feeling well, but I went down there anyways. One day I did have to stop part way through the elliptical and decide that my body was telling me to stop. However, the next day I came back with a vengeance and met my first mile in 20 minutes on the elliptical machine!
There is an issue with the Fit Bit App. I honestly don't know if it was that way last week or not, but noticed a frequent problem beginning on Tuesday when I started putting together this week's chart and all of them said out of 1505 steps. I thought there is no way I walked exactly 1505 steps on Sunday, Monday AND Tuesday. Then I realized that was the exact step count I was at when I was pulling down the data. The Impact Chart that I use frequently in the videos isn't showing accurate information. Here is an example of that. On the impact chart from the Fit Bit App it shows that on October 7th, I had 702 out of 1,021 steps taken. However I actually I took 4,326 steps that day as shown on the other picture. The Calories are also wrong because even if I did absolutely nothing on October 7th I would burn more than 741 calories. The "of steps taken" and "of calories burned" are being taken from at the time of download (so it's from 10/10/2020 at 1pm instead of 10/7/2020). It's frustrating because I use that impact chart all of the time. It resulted in having to use a different chart from the website in the video which looks like the third picture and it doesn't actually give zone minute data just active minute data.
Lying on the Table | (can see most in week 1 video)
Standing Up | (seen in week 2 and 3 video)
Sitting Up | (will show in week 4 video)
This video shows standing up exercises to help with balance (disclaimer these are the exercises I was shown to help me with my balance issues you shouldn't start anything new without discussing it with your physician). In this video, she uses the Step, the table, a 1kg weighted ball and of course the elliptical machine. This video also shows the journey through the 2nd week after the 30 day challenge. The second week started off really well, but then Mrs. Like hit a wall.
First thing you need to know is that she was on a medication during this week (it started on Monday night) and will continue to be on that same medication through week three. The side effects for her are feeling extra fatigued, extremely dry lips, nose, mouth and a bit of tummy trouble. She got in 48 zone minutes on Monday prior to starting the medication hoping this would give her a boost to be able to complete the 150 zone minutes this week, but she fell short by 7 zone minutes when she unexpectedly took days off on Friday & Saturday. See more about that in the Friday & Saturday box below.
WHAT HAPPENED? A note from Mrs. Like Well you see what had happened was ... In the morning I felt very much the same way. I spent the morning and most of the afternoon on the couch watching Supernatural. My best friend & I texted and we three mutually decided to eat dinner out. We got back much later than anticipated and by the time we got back I was so exhausted I went straight to bed. It was such a bummer to realize I was only 7 minutes shy. If I had realized that, I would have made sure I got off the couch to get that 7 zone minutes in on Saturday before I went out to eat with the best friend and the husband, but I made a choice not to exercise. In order to not miss 3 days of exercise in a row, I will go and work out a little bit on Sunday. I want to give myself that advantage going into Week 3 because I never know when I'm going to have a day when I just am limp noodle like and can't physically do it. The Fitness Weekly Update Blog Posts will come out every Sunday (if the video is able to be compiled on that day). Thanks for following along the progress of this journey. Sincerely, Mrs. Like It We will be sharing weekly updates with how Mrs. Like is doing with her physical fitness. This video was shared our channel on September 27, 2020. We hope to catch up so that starting with Week 3 that the blog posts can coordinate with the update of new fitness videos.
Notice from Mrs. Like | This video was posted on September 27th. I did not take many notes from these days to be able to give you any behind the scenes information, but I felt pretty good this week. It was nice to be able to achieve a difficult goal. It may seem silly, but 150 Active Zone Minutes in one week is very difficult for me to achieve. What are Active Zone Minute? Fit Bit Calculates your heart rate and based on your resting heart rate and age determines your heart rate targets. If you reach fat burning heart rate, you get 1 active zone minute per minute in fat burning heart zone. If you reach Cardio or Peak heart rate, you get 2 active zone minutes per one minute in Cardio or Peak heart rate. Sometimes I go based on time and sometimes I go based on active zones wanting to achieve. (example: today during Week 3 on 10/3/2020 I wanted to go 10 minutes before doing a 2 minute cool down instead of setting my target for 20 zone minutes because there was an end goal in sight instead of when am I gonna hit that 20 zone mark). Hope that you enjoy these segments. |
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