Five Favorite Summer Drinks #5Things

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining the #5Things challenge once again. This week’s topic is favorite summer drinks. Now I must say I’m not a person who loves a variety of drinks even generally, so this was a hard topic. I mean, I don’t care for lemonade, slush or juice, let alone soda or other fizzy drinks. Here is my attempt at coming up with five summer drinks I will have anyway.

1. Milkshakes. I particularly love banana and vanilla flavored milkshakes.

2. Water with fruit infusions. I love it with strawberries, cucumber, cherries, and lots of other fruits. When I tried to put some orange into my fruit infusion bottle recently, somehow some of the orange got into the actual water, which I didn’t like.

3. Iced coffee. I don’t have this often, as it is usually high in calories, but I do love iced coffee at times.

4. Smoothies. I love creating all kinds of fruit and vegetable smoothies particularly in summer, when there’s a greater variety of fruit available. Of course, I’ll still use frozen berries, as they are less expensive than the fresh kind.

5. Plain, cold water. I usually have two bottles of water in the fridge that I drink from when I want water. Especially in summer, water straight from the tap doesn’t get nearly cold enough for my liking. Out of all the things I drink, water is probably my most frequently consumed.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (June 27, 2020)

Posted on by Astrid

Happy late Saturday evening everyone! Welcome to another edition of the #WeekendCoffeeShare. Today is my birthday. I think I still have tompouces in the fridge, so grab a cup of coffee, tea or your favorite cold drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I was stressed out all week about my parents visiting yesterday. As regular readers of my blog may know, my parents are big on independence and in denial of most of my disabilities. They don’t think I should be in a care facility. Like I said yesterday though, they weren’t overly judgmental. My father made a rather bad pun on the facility’s name and my mother asked whether no-one had taught my nonspeaking fellow clients to talk, but that was about it.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you about all the lovely presents I got for my birthday. My parents gave me a drinking bottle with fruit infusion filter. I’d had it on my wishlist for years and am now loving making fruit-infused water. They also gave me a spiky or hedgehog ball. My father said it looked like a virus and my husband joked that they’d gifted me corona. Lastly, they gave me some punches, which I can use in cardmaking or other craft projects. They got these as well as the spiky ball at the thrift store.

My husband gave me a sturdy bookcase for my iPhone. It’s supposed to protect your phone against dropping from 2 meters. I’d rather not try it out though.

Lastly, my mother-in-law gifted me this giant teddy bear! It’s 1.60m tall, which is even taller than I am. I love it!

Giant Bear

I’m still not sure what to call it. I initially called it just Giant Bear, because my big panda was called Big Bear and my not even that little bear stuffy was called Little Bear. Or something. I can’t remember, honestly. Then I figured I should be calling it Joenie, which is my nickname for my husband. My husband said to call it Baloo after the bear in Jungle Book. I guess I’ll call it whatever strikes my fancy at that moment. Rainbow/Sofie, the unicorn, also has two names, after all.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you I ate some delicious Domino’s pizza this evening. My husband and I had it delivered to the care facility. I had the spicy chicken pizza and so did he, as my husband usually ends up liking my pizza more if we each order something different. I loved it! Then I had some ice cream for dessert. I got a nice present from the care facility too: a Domino’s gift voucher. I already have a reputation for eating lots of yummy food, even though today was the first time I’d ordered Domino’s since coming to the care facility last September.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that next week, I have a meeting with my community psychiatric nurse and nurse practitioner from mental health. We’re going to discuss my possibly getting EMDR treatment for some of my traumatic experiences. Now that my visit with my parents went well, I feel slightly guilty about considering some of my experiences with them traumatic, but well.

If we were having coffee, I would report on my steps as usual. This week so far, I reached just over 60K. I managed 69K last week and am doubtful I’ll reach that this week, as I’m probably going to have a lazy Sunday tomorrow.

How are you all doing?

Diet and Exercise: A Healthy Lifestyle for Wellness #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to my letter D post in the #AtoZChallenge. Usually when looking for inspiration this year, I have looked to The More or Less Definitive Guide to Self-Care by Anna Borges. Today though, no “D” topic inspired me. Besides, I had basically already made up my mind that I was going to write about diet. Then I decided to add exercise to today’s discussion, as I already have an “E” topic in mind.

Having a healthy lifestyle can be hard for most people and it’s especially hard for those of us struggling with mental health issues. When I suffer with major depression, for example, all I feel like is sleeping and eating and I certainly don’t feel like moving. I’m not telling you that you should force yourself to have a healthy lifestyle all the time. That’s not possible for most people and, when you suffer with serious mental health issues, it’s often not a priority. If it takes all your effort to get out of bed, I’m not telling you to exercise.

But generally, it can really be helpful for your wellbeing to mind your diet and physical activity level. I, for one, need to lose weight to get to a healthy BMI. However, that number on a BMI chart or even on the scale isn’t the main reason I try to eat a relatively healthy diet. It makes me feel better mentally if I get enough healthy food in me and don’t overeat. Getting enough veggies is a struggle with the poor quality of food we get here at the care facility, but I do try to eat enough fruit.

Besides nutrition, hydration is important too. I try to make sure I drink at least two liters of fluids a day. This has been harder now that my days are less structured due to the day center being closed, but I really need to get my hydration habit back up. I use an app called Water Reminder, which is free (with a one-time in-app purchase to remove ads and add some additional features).

It also certainly helps me to get moving. Now I must say that I’ve not been majorly depressed in a long time, so moving comes relatively easily to me. I particularly love walking, as regular readers of this blog will know. I also try to go on the elliptical a few times a week.

Do you try to develop or maintain a healthy lifestyle? Does it help with your mental health?

January Health and Wellness Update

Posted on by Astrid

So it’s already been over six weeks since I posted that this time finally I was serious about my weight loss and healthier living journey. I still didn’t post an update. Now is the time for one. I’ll also include a general health and wellbeing update.

I didn’t get weighed in over the holidays. Even though I took some care not to overeat, I didn’t stick to a healthy routine either. In fact, on Christmas Eve, my staff ordered Chinese and I had three servings. That clearly was a bit too much, as I had a tommy ache afterwards. Over the rest of the holiday season, I did okay’ish.

I still use my water reminder app and make sure I drink plenty of water nearly everyday. Sometimes I forget to log it, but I can be assured that I drank enough at least. When at my husband’s, it’s still a bit hard.

In January, I’ve been eating healthily most days. I eat plenty of vegetables and particularly fruit, taking care not to go for the sugary ones like bananas too much. My day activities orders grapes regularly, which the other clients can’t eat due to choking risk. I can, so I usually have them all over the course of a week.

Then of course I got sick. I didn’t eat very well for a few days two weeks ago, so that could have led to weight loss too. Then again, I did eat dinner each day. As soon as I felt a bit healthier, I started eating a good breakfast and lunch again. Lunch is still a struggle, as I’m not a fan of bread, so I often skip that. This means I only eat fruit. I don’t eat bread for breakfast usually either, but I do make sure to add muesli to my yoghurt.

I musst say I still indulge into snacks at times, but I try to limit them, so that I’m not eating all day. After all, having high blood sugar all the time contributes to type 2 diabetes.

Exercise-wise, I do pretty well. I go for a long’ish walk four to five times a week. Over the past while, I’ve managed at least 150 active minutes most weeks. I didn’t when I had the flu, of course. Still, it’s extremely hard to get to my step goal or even close. When I go for one half-hour walk a day, I usually get about 4000 steps.

So did this pay off or do I need to work harder? Regardless, I need to work harder, as healthy eating is more important than weight loss itself. Given that I only managed to do okay in the healthy living department, I was surprised to see the result on the scale last Friday. I had gone down 2.8kg or 6lbs since early December. Of course, my sickness may’ve contributed. I hope I’m not down too much when I get weighed in again at the beginning of February. I mean, that would fuel my hypochondria. I hope for a maintain or small loss. Only two more pounds and I’ll no longer be obese.

In other respects of health, I did okay too. Like I said last week, my sleep is a little messed up, in that I get a lot of vivid dreams and nightmares. For this reason, I try to do a mindfulness practice or at least listen to soothing music before going to bed now. This seems to have helped some so far.

Starting My Weight Loss Journey Again (And This Time for Real)

Posted on by Astrid

In the first week of my being in the care facility, I got weighed in. I hadn’t been weighed since sometime in like February. Not surprisingly, I had gained about 2-3kg in these nine months. I didn’t immediately take action though, as I felt I’d had to get used to being in the facility first and see how my weight would progress. Two weeks ago, I got weighed in and had gained about 500 grams again. This isn’t huge and could be due to the time of day I was being weighed in, but I decided it was time for action anyway. I’ve been in the facility for two months now and need to make sure I don’t gain any weight and ultimately lose some.

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m short-statured at only 1.53m. The upper border of healthy weight, as such, is 58.5kg. The border between overweight and obesity is 70.2kg. I weighed 74.9kg two weeks ago. This means I’ll have to lose at least 5kg. I have no intention of getting to a healthy weight, but I really want to cross the border back from obese to overweight. I also know I can do this, as I did this about 18 months ago too. Now though, once I reach overweight status, I have no intention of crossing the border back to obese.

I discussed my eating habits with my husband. He said that, if I skip just the cookie at morning coffee break and don’t change anything else, I’ll have lost those 5kg in a year or two. I want to go faster though. For this reason, I’ve also changed from chocolate spread to peanut butter on my breakfast bread. I know, peanut butter still isn’t low-calorie, but it’s a lot healthier than chocolate spread. At lunchtime, I still got two slices of bread which were heavily topped with butter and sweet toppings, one with peanut butter and the other usually with chocolate spread or chocolate flakes. There’s a mealtime assistant who prepares our lunch and I didn’t want to have a huge list of demands of her, given that I already have quite a few likes and dislikes on my list. Like, I can’t stand ham or cheese (unless toasted). I basically only eat what are called sweet toppings and don’t even like all of those. As such, I initially didn’t want to say that I don’t want butter and don’t want my bread too heavily topped. After discussing it with the staff, we agreed to put this on my list of lunchtime menu requests anyway.

My husband advised me for the millionth time to drink more water. At first, I was like, how do I remember to drink enough water? He told me to put reminders in my iPhone. At first, I thought that would be weird or annoying and indeed it’s a hassle to put reminders in my phone via the default reminders app. I however remembered a friend recommending an app that reminds you to drink water and where you can log your water intake. I searched for it. The first one I found cost like €8,99/week and hardly had any free features. I mean seriously?! Who would pay almost €40 a month for an app to remind you to drink water? I doubted my friend meant this app. Turned out there’s another app by a similar name that’s free and €9,99 once for paid features. I got that one and love it! I had some trouble setting it up at first, but now it reminds me each hour between 9AM and 9PM to drink water. Its sound is really catchy. I reached my recommended water intake goal for the past three or four days and almost reached it for the entire week that I’ve been using the app.

I finally made my Fitbit activity tracker work again this past week too. It had been lying around ever since I came here because its battery was empty and I couldn’t find the charger. Then when I finally found it, the app had somehow locked me out. I got in again after an app update. I notice that, though overall I manage fewer daily steps than before I moved here, my active hours are better. This means I get over 250 steps most hours during the day. Today, I didn’t do that well in this department, but I did manage nearly 8000 steps throughout the day.

I was pretty conscious of my eating habits all through the week, making sure I eat my veggies if there’s even the slightest chance I may be able to like them. Before this, I’d not even try a lot of them. I made sure to eat enough fruit. Not that I had much trouble with that before, but fruit usually meant bananas. These are relatively high in calories and very sugary. Thankfully, we had grapes, kiwifruit and clementines too, as well as of course apples and sometimes pears.

Over the week-end, I stayed at the facility. When discussing my weight loss plans with my husband, I mentioned that we get chips on week-ends. However, this week-end, we also got pancakes for lunch and a lot of other treats. I didn’t really like the result this would have on my weight, but also found it hard to resist them.

My staff wasn’t particularly motivating either. Some literally told me to wait for January to start my healthier lifestyle routine, as I’d not make it in December anyway. I mean, yes, we celebrate St. Nicholas with a fries and snacks stand on Thursday and get a lot of extra treats this holiday season. Does that mean I don’t need to eat in moderation? Someone asked an overeaters’ support group a few weeks back and was encouraged to follow through now in spite of the holidays. Now I don’t really like the abstinence-focused mindset of Overeaters Anonymous and the like, but I have always felt that you can always start on a healthier lifestyle journey right now.

Yesterday, I decided to get weighed in. I wanted to know how bad the result really was and how much I’d have to lose once I’d start my journey for real. Well, guess what? I weighed 73.8kg. This truly motivates me.

On Thursday, I fully intend to not stuff myself full of fries and snacks even though I can. Tomorrow, my support coordinator has an evening shift and I’ll be asking her to ask her colleagues for help on my weight loss journey. I realized this past week-end that some make me really uncomfortable with how often they offer me food. I mean, my husband was annoyed at my former support worker for allowing me (not encouraging me!) to buy binge food when she took me to the store on Thursdays. I didn’t realize and probably didn’t want to admit that, in some respects, my current staff are worse. I mean, I haven’t had a binge since buying liquorice with my mother-in-law three weeks ago and the staff definitely discouraged that, but weight gain isn’t about an occasional binge. It’s about what you eat everyday.