Self-improvement
Jun. 2nd, 2002 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupAttempting to make various permanent changes to my life... not sure why now, all of the sudden, I have the impetus to do things I've meant to do for a long time. Part of it, no doubt, is the feeling that, if I'm going to have a kid, I should officially Get My Shit Together, for once. Some things large and small--
* Trying, trying, trying to do better with the exercise. I do feel very determined to do this now because I don't have any more excuses for not doing it, and I think I'm at an age where, if I don't do it now, I'll never do it. I still loathe exercise, but I'm just going to have to make it something I do. I am tired of friends and family patting my belly when they see me (at least as much a function of my poor posture as my belly). I wish I could just get rid of the belly, because I'm fine with the rest of myself. And it's not that big of a belly, but I could stand to lose maybe 15 pounds.
I am making an effort to walk around the neighborhood (at least a half an hour) every single day, trying to take the more strenuous hills. I also hope to do the running at least twice a week. It is a pathetic start, but I did manage to do it on Friday. Exercise is strange in that it feels bad but if it's working, when you stop, you want to do it some more after a minute, and I think that's the point I'm at. My knees sure did hurt, though. I suppose I might consider swimming or weights or something.
* Diet: I hope to go for a physical when we get back from Maine and have a better reading on the triglycerides thing. (I suppose I will have to take the old people drugs anyway, since apparently diet and exercise don't do as much as Lipitor, but at least I will have given it a shot.) So I'm trying to cut out things with egg yolks or butter, and switched to (bleah) skim milk. I take coffee with fat-free half-and-half. I think this should cut out a fair amount of my dietary cholesterol and fat.
I'm also trying really hard to not eat any junk food and to get at least 3 or 4 veggie/fruit servings a day. I don't care for most fruits, but strawberries are in season and I can put bananas in my cereal. Can make a decent salad, but need more cooked green vegetables.
I found this book on vegetarianism with some useful info on protein complementarity and whatnot. Since I'm de facto vegetarian (I have meat about once a month) I should worry about this stuff. Of course the book was talking about how bad steaks are for you, and I kept thinking in Homer Simpsonese: "Mmmm, steak... [open-mouth gargling noise]."
But the book had a tasty suggestion for getting iron: dark molasses, which has a ton of iron in it -- who knew? Molasses is kind of hard to eat straight, though, so mix 1 part blackstrap molasses with 3 parts creamy peanut butter; one tablespoon of the mix has as much iron as a cup of spinach! When I ate it, I did instantly feel a lot better.
* Having success with training myself to floss every day, and what do you know, the bleeding in my gums has stopped. I feel good about that. I plan a trip to the dentist in July and I hope I don't have too much cavity work.
* Got new glasses. I was noticing some eyestrain in my left eye (turned out to be astigmatism they hadn't caught when making this pair). This is the first time I've gotten new glasses in about five years, and I've really needed new ones for at least three, after I went swimming in the Beaver Dam Quarry with them in the pocket of my trunks. When I got out the protective coating (UV?) had mottled and peeled off in a strange pattern. The result was that my right lense gives off a kind of speckled aspect in the sunlight, making me look even stranger than normal.
So I saw the optometrist; the right eye was a little worse, by a quarter of a diopter, which is small potatoes for me. My left eye is something like -6.5 and my right is now up to -9.0: coke bottle territory. This means that the glasses were unbelievably expensive, but I had already decided beforehand to spend a little money on something nice.
It is hard to change one's glasses style, but I feel that it is time for a change. I've had the same round wire tortoiseshell frames since 1988 or 1989, when
Librarygrrl described them as "new-wave dickhead glasses." The new frames are a bit more modish, more oval-shaped. My pathetic interest in getting the back-to-the-70s plastic frames was wisely vetoed by the Mrs.
* Getting some new RAM for the iMac in preparation for upgrading to OS X. I hope this will remedy a lot of the annoying little problems I am having lately, like being unable to upload documents as email attachments on my web browsers. That is not really personal self-improvement, but this is my journal, so what the heck. I can't wait for it to arrive!
* Trying, trying, trying to do better with the exercise. I do feel very determined to do this now because I don't have any more excuses for not doing it, and I think I'm at an age where, if I don't do it now, I'll never do it. I still loathe exercise, but I'm just going to have to make it something I do. I am tired of friends and family patting my belly when they see me (at least as much a function of my poor posture as my belly). I wish I could just get rid of the belly, because I'm fine with the rest of myself. And it's not that big of a belly, but I could stand to lose maybe 15 pounds.
I am making an effort to walk around the neighborhood (at least a half an hour) every single day, trying to take the more strenuous hills. I also hope to do the running at least twice a week. It is a pathetic start, but I did manage to do it on Friday. Exercise is strange in that it feels bad but if it's working, when you stop, you want to do it some more after a minute, and I think that's the point I'm at. My knees sure did hurt, though. I suppose I might consider swimming or weights or something.
* Diet: I hope to go for a physical when we get back from Maine and have a better reading on the triglycerides thing. (I suppose I will have to take the old people drugs anyway, since apparently diet and exercise don't do as much as Lipitor, but at least I will have given it a shot.) So I'm trying to cut out things with egg yolks or butter, and switched to (bleah) skim milk. I take coffee with fat-free half-and-half. I think this should cut out a fair amount of my dietary cholesterol and fat.
I'm also trying really hard to not eat any junk food and to get at least 3 or 4 veggie/fruit servings a day. I don't care for most fruits, but strawberries are in season and I can put bananas in my cereal. Can make a decent salad, but need more cooked green vegetables.
I found this book on vegetarianism with some useful info on protein complementarity and whatnot. Since I'm de facto vegetarian (I have meat about once a month) I should worry about this stuff. Of course the book was talking about how bad steaks are for you, and I kept thinking in Homer Simpsonese: "Mmmm, steak... [open-mouth gargling noise]."
But the book had a tasty suggestion for getting iron: dark molasses, which has a ton of iron in it -- who knew? Molasses is kind of hard to eat straight, though, so mix 1 part blackstrap molasses with 3 parts creamy peanut butter; one tablespoon of the mix has as much iron as a cup of spinach! When I ate it, I did instantly feel a lot better.
* Having success with training myself to floss every day, and what do you know, the bleeding in my gums has stopped. I feel good about that. I plan a trip to the dentist in July and I hope I don't have too much cavity work.
* Got new glasses. I was noticing some eyestrain in my left eye (turned out to be astigmatism they hadn't caught when making this pair). This is the first time I've gotten new glasses in about five years, and I've really needed new ones for at least three, after I went swimming in the Beaver Dam Quarry with them in the pocket of my trunks. When I got out the protective coating (UV?) had mottled and peeled off in a strange pattern. The result was that my right lense gives off a kind of speckled aspect in the sunlight, making me look even stranger than normal.
So I saw the optometrist; the right eye was a little worse, by a quarter of a diopter, which is small potatoes for me. My left eye is something like -6.5 and my right is now up to -9.0: coke bottle territory. This means that the glasses were unbelievably expensive, but I had already decided beforehand to spend a little money on something nice.
It is hard to change one's glasses style, but I feel that it is time for a change. I've had the same round wire tortoiseshell frames since 1988 or 1989, when
Librarygrrl described them as "new-wave dickhead glasses." The new frames are a bit more modish, more oval-shaped. My pathetic interest in getting the back-to-the-70s plastic frames was wisely vetoed by the Mrs.* Getting some new RAM for the iMac in preparation for upgrading to OS X. I hope this will remedy a lot of the annoying little problems I am having lately, like being unable to upload documents as email attachments on my web browsers. That is not really personal self-improvement, but this is my journal, so what the heck. I can't wait for it to arrive!
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new wave dickhead?
Date: 2002-06-02 11:05 am (UTC)I love new glasses. I have two pairs of regular glasses-- wire frames and purple rectangular plastic. I also have a pair of perscription sunglasses. I'm trying not to get another pair until next year, when my insurance will pay for most of it. If I could, I would have like 4 or 5 pairs. What can I say? Some women like shoes.
Glasses are on your face all the time-- you should like them.
Babysitting a 10 month old today, all day. And here I am squandering his precious nap time like this...gotta go.
Re: new wave dickhead?
Date: 2002-06-02 03:31 pm (UTC)The "new wave dickhead glasses" was not describing me (or at least that's how I took it). It commented on the odd fact that for some imperceptible reason, 1988 was the year that people stopped wearing square wire frames and began wearing round ones. Actually I think it must have started around 1987, with that odd "summer of love" sixties-revival thing, when people started wearing tie-dye shirts and John Lennon glasses started appearing. So you memorably defined a fad, which is the most important attribute of cultural criticism, no?
People are always telling me things I supposedly said to them once, and I NEVER remember it. This really bugs me.