cindy's world

I went out with some coworkers for lunch, and after topics dealing with personal drama, retirement, social activities, children and pets, complaints about work, speculation about coworkers — the usual stuff — somehow we hit on hypothyroidism. So I think I have it. I’d been tested before as having borderline hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid), but the doctor didn’t want to put me on medication in case it swings back into normal, cuz then I’d get really sick on the meds. Now that I’ve done some research on WebMD, I’m convinced my thyroid has swung into sleep mode again.

Hypothyroidism Symptoms
Symptoms of hypothyroidism usually develop slowly over months or years. Symptoms and signs may include:

Coarse and thinning hair. (I have a lot less hair now than I used to.)
Dry skin. (So dry it itches when my skin’s stretched out!)
Brittle nails. (They are chipping more easily these days, especially by my razor.)
A yellowish tint to the skin. (…and I thought I was just Asian.)
Slow body movements. (Totally. I ooze place-to-place now.)
Cold skin. (I’m always cold now.)
Inability to tolerate cold. (See above.)
Feeling tired, sluggish, or weak. (Check, check, and check. Sluggish. Oozing.)
Memory problems, depression, or difficulty concentrating. (I don’t retain info like I used to, which makes me sad, and the sadness detracts from my ability to concentrate on my work. That and boredom. Which makes me sad, too.)
Constipation. (I read in several places that unless you’re pooping 2-3 times a day, you’re constipated. So I’d poop halfway, cut it off, suck the rest back up to save for later so that I’d poop more often in a day. I’m SO just kidding! Don’t take me seriously! 98% of all constipated people are full of shit, anyway.)
Heavy or irregular menstrual periods that may last longer than 5 to 7 days. (I bleed like an amputee when I’m off the pill.)

Other, less common symptoms may include:

An enlarged thyroid gland (goiter).
Modest weight gain, often 10 lb(4.5 kg) or less.
Swelling of the arms, hands, legs, and feet, and facial puffiness, particularly around the eyes.
Hoarseness.
Muscle aches and cramps.

So now we have a cause for my sluggishness, dry skin, weight gain, hair loss, etc etc. =P This is why I can never be a med student (next to “queasy around blood,” and “needs a functional brain”).

I’ve been pooped lately. I wish I’d noted whether I’m just pooped these few days (so I can blame it on PMS or mental stress), or whether I’ve been like this for a few weeks (which I’d have to blame on my recent weight gain and drop in the intensity of exercise).

At lunch today, I did 25 minutes on the treadmill — a 2-mile run plus a walking 1-lap cooldown — and 25 minutes on the elliptical trainer. Before you give me any kudos for this, lemme say that I had planned on doing 40 minutes straight on the treadmill, which would give me a 4-mile run. But I couldn’t do it. My conditioning has melted to crap, and being out of battery on my MP3 player didn’t help.

This is gonna be my new think-of-it-this-way: I will lose 15 pounds in a specific, preset number of days, and all I have to do is put in my 40 minutes at the gym daily. Any day I take off will be added to the number of calendar days until I reach my target weight. Simple formula. I’m gonna call it 90 gym days. The more gym days I put in, the quicker I can cross off calendar days in reaching my goal. There, I think I’ve now convinced myself that it’s easy.

What happened to the days when every other day, I’d do 40 minutes of weights at lunch, then 40 minutes of cardio after work, and run 3-5 miles on the days in-between, plus one long 6-12 mile run on one weekend day and a 2-hour weight-training workout on the other weekend day? Man, I had no life.

In the gym locker room earlier at lunch, as I was pulling my workout clothes out of my bag to change, I realized that I had not packed my sports bra. I couldn’t believe it. I went thru all my stuff, and sure enough, wasn’t there. I actually stood there for close to 2 minutes, unsure of what to do. I had planned to do a 3-4 mile run on the treadmill, so I need the jogbra. Can I go in the bra I’m wearing now? Not enough support for running, and I don’t want to wear a sweaty bra back to work and for the rest of the afternoon. Light workout, no run? Not worth my time if I don’t sweat. My MP3 player was about to die on low batteries anyway.

So I drove to McDonald’s and had a fajita wrap, small Fruit n’ Yogurt parfait, and their Fruit Walnut Salad, sat in my car and listened to the antics of Heidi, Frosty & Frank on 97.1FM.

My trainee, however, busted her butt at the other gym doing a long cardio session at an increased resistance level. Shhh, don’t tell her all I did was eat and sit.

Now that I’ve hopefully inspired* you guys to be good little spouses, lemme inspire you into making your bodies and health better.

*i.e., scared

Email chain between me and my gym trainee (adjusted for easier reading):

Her: You’d be proud of me I worked on my arms, abs, and did 20 minutes of cardio (x-cross trainer) on level 4. Monday I think I’m moving it to level 5. I was dying yersterday but it seemed easy today.
Me: I AM proud of you. =) Cardio is easy/hard depending on how much sleep you had, whether you had breakfast that day, how hydrated you are, and what time of month it is for you.
Her: I’m working my way to that one. Since I don’t were my medical card around my neck I don’t want to push it and end up in County hospital.
Me: haha! Hey, you don’t have any health conditions that may be exascerbated by strenuous exercise, do you? I should’ve asked you that first before we started training.
Her: high blood pressure. But that’s been great since I lost weight and started exercising. My doctor said it’s the best it’s been in years. To continue to do what ever it is I’m doing. 🙂
Me: wow, I’m so glad to hear that the exercise has more than cosmetic effect for you. I didn’t know that! You’re gonna save a lot of aggravation and money on blood pressure meds.
Her: People don’t understand why it’s so important to me. The doctor told me if I planned on being at my son’s high school graduation I better start acting like it. My body is not able to carry the extra weight. I had problem once I put on 20 pounds while I was pregant. 🙁 So I couldn’t be the happy fat (oops obese) lady even then. So it’s deeper than tryin to be cute. But I love giving the men something to look at too! Now if I can only do something with my hair.

Last nite in jujitsu we went over 14 ways to disarm and disable 14 types of knife attacks. (tanto no kata.)

I got stabbed so many times…

This Thanksgiving I’m going to be grateful for rubber-tipped knives.

I went to dinner last nite with my parents and my godbro’s parents. As soon as I walked into the restaurant where I was meeting them, the conversation turned to my recent weight gain. My godbro’s mother had lost some weight recently by simply cutting out white rice from her diet, and she said she was like me. My mom said no, not like me, because I gained weight recently. “Did she?” godbro’s mom said looking at me skeptically. I admitted to the 15-lb weight gain. My dad said his theory on my weight gain is that it has to do with my present emotional well-being. He then turned to me and said, “You’re happy, aren’t you?” I said I am. The weight gain did coincide rather suspiciously with my dating Mr. W. “I’d rather have you like this and happy than skinny and miserable,” he said. The godbro’s parents agreed, saying that I’m fine the way I am so the elevated mood is well worth the weight gain, altho my mom interrupted by saying that I should still watch the pounds for health reasons and I should make more effort to lose the weight.

So the moral of the dinner is that my dad’s happy for me and my mom still thinks I’m fat. I’m not really sure what to do with that. I guess liposuction is the answer to everything.

I don’t think Mr. W enjoyed the 3-mile midnite run we did Wednesday nite as it’s past his usual bedtime, so this weekend, the plan was to run Friday earlier in the evening, Saturday sometime, and Sunday sometime. My lunchtime workout on Friday (last day before my trainee returns from her Hawaii vacation) left my lower butt and upper thighs way too sore to do much running, so all we did Friday nite was fall asleep trying to watch Charlie & the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp on DVD. Saturday morning, as you guys know, we got up early to watch Harry Potter, but after a rather heavy lunch, we came back to his place and crashed for hours. Then when we got up again, we ate watermelon and fell asleep again (well, I did anyway; Mr. W was responsible and went to bed) trying to watch Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. It’s a really good movie; it just kept hitting the 9:30p timeslot when I usually fall asleep watching TV at home. This morning, we finally got some exercise in.

We biked 9.5 miles along scenic riverbeds (and by “scenic,” I mean there are birds pecking in the mud and less than 2 dead bodies floating face down. no, I’m kidding, parts of it was beautiful and we saw lots of gray herrings) and had breakfast at Coco’s, then biked another 7.5 miles on the way back. The reason there’s a mileage difference is because for about a block, we biked thru dirt instead of on sidewalks or bike paths, which resulted in my rear tire getting flat. That’s what I get for complaining that I’m not getting a big cardio benefit from the biking and that my ass hurts. Karma: “Oh, you want more effort for cardio benefit, huh? Oh, your ass hurts? Let’s see what we can do to resolve those problems.” So we walked the bikes another mile until we got back to civilization, I sat out and Mr. W biked the rest of the way home, and brought his truck to pick me up as I picked the stupid spikey plant spines out of the tires. Oh yeah, the front tire went hissingly, too. I put my hand over it and there was actually air pumping out. I felt like putting my face down there to at least take advantage of the cool breeze.

We got back, I jumped in the shower, and now I’m blogging about how on top of it my karma is. Man. Last time I called in sick to work and said I had a bladder infection, I got a bladder infection (a very bad one) within the new few hours. It’s getting to the point where I’m scared to say anything these days. What happened to freedom of expression, Karma?

It’s getting closer to 1pm now. Mr. W just got out of the shower. Maybe we’ll try Charlie & the Chocolate Factory again.

It’s cold out there, I have cramps, I’m fatigued, I got off of work late. I’m skipping jujitsu. But I’ll think about going to the gym. I was going to finally catch up on my Cancun entries, but now that I’ve logged on to everything and made myself available to people’s cyber arrows, I’m in a foul mood and I don’t feel like it anymore. I think I’m gonna just sit around in my bathrobe and read, or watch TV.
*smolder*
I love it when people start crap just so they can pin it on you. Real mature.

** Update 7:46pm **
I just had a very nice IM conversation with my godbrother. I haven’t talked to him in a while, and it wasn’t like we talked a lot before. But it’s really nice to find that you’re related, even if not by blood, to someone who makes you laugh so hard you cry, and who has the depth to be a good friend and tell you in a dark moment that he loves you instead of lecturing at you. That makes my whole logging on worthwhile. That and my other IM conversations with good friends. =)

Today’s noontime workout was momentous because this is the first time that my trainee surpassed my weights, and this after just a couple months of working out, from scratch. She went 10 lbs more than me on the reverse flies and prone hamstring curls; 5 lbs more on the seated leg extensions. I can claim to simply be tired from my runs or blame it on PMS, but I’d like to think it’s that she’s doing really well.

I’m so proud of myself.

I mean, of her.

The strangest thing happened to me on my lunchtime run today. I decided to give my MP3 player another chance, so I wore it around my neck, put the earphones in, but I held on to it with a hand (the small pen drive dangles to my belly button when it’s on the neck strap) so that it wouldn’t swing into something and shut off. It operated perfectly. That’s not the strange part.

The strange thing is that with the music blasting in my ears, the run was totally, completely effortless. The whole experience was unreal. My feet fell into pace with the music, as with my breathing. The music was providing so much energy that I felt like I was just bounding along. I could’ve been walking for all the effort exerted in the run. Because I couldn’t hear the pounding of my feet on the treadmill over the music (nor my breathing, for that matter), I felt like I was bouncing along on air. So much of exercise is mental. Four miles flew by, I never was out of breath, I felt like I could’ve increased the speed but I didn’t want to push it. Because the treadmill faces a mirrored wall, I watched myself glint with sweat and was fascinated at the feel of perspiration that seemed so out of place because my body wasn’t complaining at all about being hot, tired, or pushed. It was like, “Why’m I sweating? I’m just hanging out here.”

Maybe the music drowned out the little whiny voice that complains of being tired or bored. My energy did seem to wane in between songs when I was able to hear the impact of my feet on the treadmill and the hardness of my breath. Or maybe there was something in the pastries that my reporter brought in this morning which she made over the weekend. Hmm…