WHEE (Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise) is a community support diary for Kossacks who are currently or planning to start losing, gaining or maintaining their weight through diet and exercise or fitness. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are working on your weight or fitness, please -- join us! You can also click the WHEE tag to view all diary posts.
First order of business: WHEE is now a month old! Please sign up in the comments to volunteer for a diary slot. We have already proven there is adequate interest to sustain a variety of foci - on nutrition, on research, on personal stories and on lessons learned, to keep WHEE going as a twice-daily support journal for those seeking to regain or to sustain their health. Even if the only exercise you ever do on DKOS is to schlep down to your local Health Care Town Hall and face down the Teabaggers - you can diary it here! Be part of the change we have been waiting for!
Amble over the turnstile to find out what the hell the topic is for today!
So what the hell IS this diary about? For the previous diaries in the Turtle series you may find them here:
A Turtle's Story
Turtle Diary
Today's installment, which marks my 30 days of commiting to participation on this group, and to a moderate restricted low-carbohydrate, high protein diet and a regular fitness plan, is on the topic of moderation. Sure, slow and steady WILL win the race, as Aesop taught us in the Children's Book of Knowledge. However, there is also the problem, for compulsives, to overdo. I belong to another weight-loss and fitness support group for those who have long-term weight, fitness, and health issues, and I am constantly biting my tongue before hitting the "Send" button, and have already offended at least one struggling compulsive whose idea of motivating herself is to castigate herself for her "badness". Others are looking for support (enabling, let me add) for their OCD issues (Osbessive compulsive disorder) which somehow, compel them to eat say, 6 of everything, because they "can only eat in sixes." I had bad flashbacks to "The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-time" over that one. Sounds like autism-spectrum to me but I'm no doctor and I only play a psychologist on TV.
The topic is MODERATION. Eating six of everything is NOT moderation. Going out on a Sunday morning at 6 a.m. and taking a hike in the woods in the pouring rain, is NOT moderation, and so I rolled over and slept a bit longer, and when I finally got up an hour later, I checked the radar to make sure the rain had passed. If it had not, there would be no exercise today and I would call it my 30-day rest. (Even though 30 days would be today rather than yesterday! It's moderation to not have to count things down to the day. I can do the compulsive thing, but compulsivity is what I am reluctantly surrendering in order to have a happier, healthier, saner life. Yes, sanity does play a large role here.
So I went out to Moir Park again, a place I will be leaving at month-end to move to Minneapolis. Or hopefully - before, because part of living a moderate life is to move out when the landlady reneges on her part of the agreement for supplying fridge space near the cooking space. It happens: but the bottom line of that story was simply, it bugged her to see someone doing something positive about getting into shape, and she had to sabotage me. Nuh huh. Not this time. I lived with sabotagers and mental illness in my family of origin, and I don't need to pay rent for the privilege of getting into the particular insanity of her world. I don't need to know.
Okay so where was I? Oh yes. Turtles are easily diverted onto easier - downhill - trails you see! And immediately I knew it was going to be one of those achy days where everything HURT. But today... it wasn't my low back that was cramping up on me, it was my calves, my thighs, my hamstrings... and my Sansa was giving me a "subscription synchronization" error and I couldn't get the added incentive of Schumann's 4th to get me through the muscle pain. But nature provided its own incentives: mushrooms.
Pause here where I paused for some rather impressive looking toadstools!
Puffballs: the size of my head!
The aftermath of a puffball explosion.
Another mushroom species - edible? Maybe someone here knows
A mushroom family stops to pose for the camera
And so I managed, with frequent stops to find another species of rapidly-growing fungi peeking out from between the leaves, or getting ready to explode and spread its spores deeper into the woods before the ground dries out, to make it .7 miles into the woods, and another .7 back out again, without compulsively looking at the clock, measuring my speed, trying to get my heartrate up or force myself to drink water. And my knees began to hurt, and I had to stretch, and do bends and crouches and such to get the creaking muscles, which are busily growing once more, to carry me back home to check in with all the rest of you turtles to let you know there's life after 30 days...! I made it this far, and I think I'm going to take a nap!
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UPCOMING WHEE DIARIES
Aug 16:
Sun AM - louisev
Sun PM - jiffykeen
Aug 17:
Mon AM - NC Dem
Mon PM - Wee Mama
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Aug 19:
Wed AM - Edward Spurlock
Wed PM - Batensmack
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Aug 23
Sun AM - louisev
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