So, it's the first of January again, and it's time to lay out my plans for my #Project365#2024Project
It's going to come in two parts this year, because it's touching on a sensitive topic, so some of the posts will have a CW, and some hashtags to filter them.
Top level is #2024Project. Someone asked if they could join in on a daily project, and I said sure, that I'd use a top-level hashtag for anyone who wants to join in at a "daily project" level, but doesn't want to join in the actual project. Feel free to use this one in your daily project posts. I could even make a list, if you want!
Project level is #2024HealthProject. It's just a daily check-in for accountability on getting healthier, and for the folks who want the accountability thing on this in particular, and asked if they could join in.
I'll be using two separate hashtags to separate the personal posts. The second ones will also get a CW.
The first will be my daily check-in #HealthyAllie2024, with two goals:
Drink 2L of water per day, in addition to other liquids. I don't drink enough water. I have a notated drink bottle which will at least let me know how far I got each day.
A minimum of Five minutes of exercise six days a week, with Sunday as a "rest" day, increasing by five minutes per day each month, with a goal of doing a minimum of 60 minutes of exercise per day by December.
I'm really trying hard not to overcomplicate this, because I don't want to give myself an extra burden by committing to lengthy exercise reviews, but I might make some comments.
The second will come with a CW and be hashtagged with #LessAllie2024. Will be at least monthly, and it will be about weight loss. The hashtag & CW are for the folks for whom this is a triggering subject, so they can mute it. I'll explain more in a separate post.
Gonna unpin my old project post, and pin this one, and off we go again.
I plan to do a weekly check-in with my weight each Sunday, and on the first day of the month, I'll do a check-in with weights and progress measurements.
I know what I need to do, and I'm going to use the #LessAllie2024 to talk about it and vent about it, and maybe record my thoughts and successes and failures.
Along with being able to do 60 minutes of exercise a day by December, I want to be down to below 140kg by December 31. That's at least 24kg, which is 2kg per month, which is considered a safe and slow weight loss goal.
I also want to improve my lean body mass, and plan for part of my exercise goals to target muscles that will (hopefully) give me a more feminine silhouette.
The reasons for #LessAllie2024 are in my next post, which is a lot more personal.
Over a decade ago, I got stuck into a keto diet at my doctor's recommendation, with weekly check-ins with him. I made videos that I posted to YouTube, I listened to a fantastic podcast that taught me a lot about losing weight in a healthy way, and the importance of weight training and lean muscle.
I know how to lose weight. I lost weight, and got down to 108kg (238lbs). That was less than I weighed in high school. I'd started at 174.8kg (385lbs).
Yet when I looked in the mirror, I couldn't see a difference.
Not long after hitting that weight, I hurt my back badly while we were moving house, with the end result being that I put on 32kgs, and my weight hovered around 140kg (309lbs) for many years.
The problem is that eating has always been my main coping mechanism. In that same period of time, I was trying to come to terms with my #GenderDysphoria, and find a cure for it. I used food (and for a long time, alcohol) to numb the pain. My weight crept back up until I hit a plateau of around 160-165kg (353-364lbs).
When I had the breakdown in 2020, I lost a whole lot of weight dropping back down to just under 140kg for six months because I just wasn't eating, and the meds weren't helping, until Duloxetine, which fixed my brain within two weeks.
I also gained 20kgs (44lbs) in 4 months(!), which brought me back to that 160-165kg plateau.
It's hard on my body to carry that much weight, particularly on my heart (hello high blood pressure!) but above all else, that fat is distributed in an explicitly male-coded way, which is a huge #GenderDysphoria trigger for me.
It also means that I can't buy or wear any cute clothes that I like, because they don't fit properly, which becomes a vicious dysphoria circle.
#HRT should cause some fat redistribution over time, with my body becoming more female shaped, but there are no guarantees for how that will turn out, if at all.
That moment when I looked in the mirror and I couldn't see any difference in my body between my start weight and 108kgs? That was retroactively diagnosed as body dysmorphia by my psychologist (on top of the gender dysphoria, yay!).
My "eating-to-cope" is not just a coping mechanism. It's Binge Eating Disorder. Again, that was a formal diagnosis.
These are both things I'm working on with my psychologist.
Please understand that my reasons for losing weight and not ones I'm willing to debate. I understand fat acceptance, and HAES (Health At Every Size), but this is a deep and complex issue for me.
If this is the kind of thing you find triggering, please don't read it. Please mute it.
I know there will be something I want to add later in the year, figure I'll make space for it now. It's literally what happened last year when I realised I wanted to add some extra commentary and I had no room.
January 1, 2024 - Day 1 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 1
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 2L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 6m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Outdoors
Distance: 0.55km
Pace: 11m12s/km
HR: 113BPM
Comments:
Turned out to be harder to motivate myself than I expected.
Gotta get my shoes and socks on, put on a sports bra, and I was really sleepy, to the point I dozed off for an hour ~6pm.
I haven't been taking my anti-inflammatories for a few days, which meant that it felt extra painful on my back. I don't want to keep relying on anti-inflammatories though, so... pushed through.
I need to look up some core strengthening exercises tomorrow, and put something small together there too.
January 2, 2024 - Day 2 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 2
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 2L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 7m
Exercise: VR Boxing
Location: Indoors
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Kcal burned: 142
HR: 108BPM
Comments:
Slept badly last night. Couldn't get back to sleep this morning. Dozed off this evening, and it was raining when I woke up.
"OK, BoxVR!"
That was when I realised that I hadn't set up my OG Vive since building the new PC, which meant that I had to go through the whole kerfuffle of pairing the base stations again, and drawing out my playspace, then convincing Steam VR that it does fit (only just).
But my heartrate and calories tracking app isn't working correctly, so none of that got tracked either, but BoxVR said I'd burned 142Kcal, and my watch said my HR was at least 108BPM, and I definitely feel like I worked out, so counting that as a win.
January 3, 2024 - Day 3 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 3
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 2L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 6m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Outdoors
Distance: 0.55km
Pace: 10'42"/km
Kcal burned: 60
HR: 108BPM
Comments:
Another day, another mid-afternoon doze out. Except this time I woke up super-cranky.
Then I decided to fix my reviews blog so I can start moving the reviews across to there as a more easily searched home, and if you want to improve your mood, don't go digging around in the guts of a Wordpress theme trying to work out why it's broken.
Finally just forced myself out the door after 9pm.
January 5, 2024 - Day 5 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 5
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 0L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 7m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Outdoors
Distance: 0.55km
Pace: 12'34"/km
Kcal burned: 79
HR: 102BPM
Comments:
Today has been a shitshow from go to whoa. If I didn't know better, I would have been convinced it was a Tuesday.
Yesterday I forgot my water consumption until mid-afternoon, and I was up multiple times during the night as a consequence.
I forgot the water again today, but I'm not making the same mistake. I've had liquid, but it was coffee in the morning, and sugar-free soft drinks in the afternoon. Not a lot of sugar-free cola, which is an improvement.
I had to force myself out the door to walk, but at least I did it.
January 6, 2024 - Day 6 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 6
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 0L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 1h46m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Indoors
Distance: 7.2km
Pace: n/a
Steps: 10440
Kcal burned: n/a
HR: n/a
Comments:
Drank a lot of liquid, none of it water, almost all of it sugar-free, except for a Lime Jarritos with my "naked burrito". The water thing is a lot harder than I thought. I've installed a water-reminder app on my watch, so... let's see how that goes.
Walked... a lot. Even did a specific non-stop five minute walk around Chadstone, but... I definitely got my "five minutes" in today.
Comments:
Diet has been harder than I expected. What I really want to do is track my food intake, because when I've been successful in the past, it's been because I was tracking.
Thinking about it now, part of that may have just been ADHD, in that I could actually remember what I'd eaten, which meant I neither over-ate nor under-ate.
The other side of that is inconsistency. When I can just dump a meal into the meal tracker, it's easy. When I have to add each separate ingredient, it becomes too much effort, so I just... don't.
The solution to this is meal planning. Something to look into more in the coming week.
@grissallia ooooooooof yes, food tracking is my pet hate. As you pointed out, it’s easy to add a “meal” but it’s a pain in the ring when you cook actual food and you have to add the exact measurements of everything that goes in your mouth. How many grams of chicken was in that chicken cacciatore? How much of that did you have? Fucked if I know…
January 8, 2024 - Day 8 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 8
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 2L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 6m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Outdoors
Distance: 0.56km
Pace: 10'55"/km
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: 84
HR: 108BPM
Comments:
Bought another water bottle yesterday. Only 1L, but turns out that size does matter, as it feels far easier to grab a 1L bottle than a 2L bottle. The Water Minder app is helping too.
January 9, 2024 - Day 9 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 9
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: >5m
Exercise: Physical labour
Location: Indoors
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: 5592
Kcal burned: n/a
HR: n/a
Comments:
I'm trying to get my brain out of the space that only "proper" exercise "counts".
We replaced our slowly collapsing pair of Kmart TV cabinets with an upcycled timber TV cabinet that we got for free via Facebook. My wife did the painting & upcycling, I did the drilling holes and mounting TV retention straps, and recabling EVERYTHING, and somehow managed to rack up over 5592 steps as well, and everything hurts right now.
I have been moving and lifting and climbing up and down stairs, and walking through Bunnings, and I think I can fairly say that I exceeded five minutes "exercise" today.
Didn't drink anywhere near enough water (did drink over 2L of fluid, but only 1L was actual water; thanks funky new water bottle!).
January 11, 2024 - Day 11 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 11
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 2L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 7m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Outdoors
Distance: 0.57km
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: 61
HR: n/a
Comments:
Today marked my first binge of the year. I ate an entire tub of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food.
I was diagnosed with #BingeEating Disorder a few years ago, and after the Dx, the psychologist just left me with the knowledge that I have it, but no help on how to deal with it.
I'm sitting there as I'm eating it, unsure of why I asked my son to pick it up, but more frustratingly, unable to stop myself from eating it. I'm staring into the tub as I take spoonful after spoonful, and thinking I should leave some, and then... I just kept going.
My tooth broke off during this binge, which didn't help my emotional state.
Curiously, my inability to stop myself found context in an ADHD video that popped up on my Facebook feed as I was going to bed.
Apparently it's a common ADHD thing for high-dopamine response foods (y'know, like a pint of sugar) to get eaten in a single sitting.
It's something I've felt terribly ashamed of for literally decades, but for the first time I feel like I can actually make some sense of it.
I've known for a long time that I can't have sugary foods in the house, because I'll just eat them, but now I can understand the why.
January 12, 2024 - Day 12 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 12
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 2L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 50m
Exercise: Gorilla Tag (VR)
Location: Indoors
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: 414kcal
HR: 138bpm
Comments:
...and now for something completely different.
My son has been begging me to play Gorilla Tag with him. It's his favourite VR game. We've both got ancient OG Vive headsets, his was made from broken parts I collected on Fb marketplace.
I'm kind of happy that he's been into a VR game that's quite physical and he'll play for one or two hours.
I've got fitness app call YUR.fit that tracks movement and pairs with an Apple Watch app, which I finally got working correctly.
Got the headset on, fired up the app, got into Gorilla Tag, and... I did not see that coming.
Your character is a cartoon gorilla torso, and in-game locomotion is by running with your arms, like a gorilla.
50 minutes of that and everything hurts. Parts of me that I didn't know could hurt are hurting.
Finished the game utterly dripping in sweat, and feeling like I'd done the hardest workout I've done in the past 12 months.
January 13, 2024 - Day 13 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 13
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: >5m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Outdoors
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR: n/a
Comments:
We took the boy out to the pool for his swimming lesson yesterday, and while we were watching, I drank my way through my bottle of water, so I drank a litre of water yesterday.
Then we left the pool, and headed towards the shops.
By the time we got to the shopping strip, I needed to really...go. No public toilets.
The shop assistant waved in the general direction of the nearby shopping centre. I can't tell you how long it took me to get there, but I was walking as fast as I could, and I didn't stop to put my workout tracking on, but I was power-walking for over five minutes because I did not want this to be the first time I wet my pants in public since I was a child, y'know?
Comments:
Still not tracking, although my breakthrough this week in terms of simple carbs & sugar consumption, and my ADHD, means that when we went shopping yesterday, I mentally skipped over the high-sugar content food realising that I would almost definitely eat them in one sitting once the packet was opened.
Started working on the meal planning, but I basically spent most of the week doing things that needed to be done, and skipping the things that should have been done.
January 14, 2024 - Day 14 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 14
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 26m
Exercise: VR Fitness Apps
Location: Indoors
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: 158
HR: n/a
Comments:
Didn't want to push myself too hard today, as I'm back to work tomorrow.
Thought I'd try some of my other VR "Fitness" apps. I played "Oh Shape" for 15min and Beat Saber for 11min.
It was a reasonable workout, but nothing like Box VR. The funniest part is that I burned just as many calories in Beat Saber as I did in Oh Shape, but only one of those is a "fitness" app.
January 19, 2024 - Day 19 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 19
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 6m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Outdoors
Distance: 0.56km
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR: n/a
Comments:
I did not account for how much on-call would screw with me this week. Every day has been "just drag myself outside for five minutes". I'm physically and emotionally wrecked.
January 20, 2024 - Day 20 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 20
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: >60m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Indoors
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR: n/a
Comments:
Crashed out this afternoon, then dragged myself out to the supermarket, and spent over an hour shoving a shopping trolley around the supermarket. Learning to recognise that even that is exercise. It also left me too wiped out to go for a "proper walk". Bed now.
January 21, 2024 - Day 21 - Weigh-in
Total Weigh-ins: 4
Start weight: 164.3kg (362lb 3.5oz)
Last weight: 162.7kg (358lb 11.1oz)
Current weight: 161.3kg (355lb 9.7oz)
Weekly change: 1.4kg (3lb 1.4oz) loss
Total change: 3kg (6lb 9.8oz) loss
Goal change: 0.5kg (1lb 1.6oz) p/w
Actual change (avg): 1kg (2lb 3.3oz) p/w
Comments:
Continuing to mostly try and avoid sugars and simple carbs.
I wanted to be down 1.5kg at this point, and I'm down 3kg, so I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Remembering to grab my water bottle and refill it are the main challenges to the 2L of water per day challenge, but overall I'm happy with my progress so far.
I've managed to collect most of the ingredients to make a meal and do food prep for a second serving, it's just remembering to do it.
Comments:
This was the follow-up to yesterday's work. Lots of long overdue cleaning up the edges of the lawn in the front yard. Who wants to do more than the basic mowing when the house is about to be knocked down?
It's more than that though... part of this change and caring more about myself is that it feels like it extends beyond me now.
January 23, 2024 - Day 23 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 23
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 2L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: (see comments)
Exercise: n/a
Location: n/a
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR: n/a
Comments:
Writing this on the 24th. There was no active exercise yesterday. There was incidental exercise, walking through a shopping centre, and that was probably 5-10 minutes.
Yesterday was a hard day, not just because the lack of sleep, but because I had complex conversations with the psychologist, followed by a disaster of a dentist visit (I was prepared for the worst, and yet things were actually worse).
I went to the shops between these two appointments.
Got home, and what started out as a brief chat with my wife around 6pm turned into one of those conversations that went on until almost midnight.
It was well after 10pm before I noticed the time, and my exercise window was closed. Exercise too close to bed, and it wakes me up.
January 24, 2025 - Day 25 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 25
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1.25L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 0m
Exercise: n/a
Location: n/a
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR (avg): n/a
Comments:
Starting the day at 8:15am with a stressful call to the ATO, then dealing with Centrelink, lead into a workday that was completely upended by events, and interrupted by the plumber showing up, and then me having to head into the city for an event, only to get home and have to have another heavy duty conversation... I didn't find 5 minutes. By the time I realised, it was too late (I could exercise for five minutes, but then I wouldn't get to sleep until 2am).
January 27, 2025 - Day 27 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 27
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 0m
Exercise: n/a
Location: n/a
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR (avg): n/a
Comments:
Writing this on the following day; in the back of my head, the thing I've been worried about is what would happen when I got sick. It feels like I do that a fair bit, with a penchant for colds and other respiratory games.
Yesterday afternoon, I started sneezing, then coughing, then my eyes turned red, and it's either some kind of allergy, or I'm coming down with something. Again.
Within an hour or so, I'd crashed out in bed for a couple of hours. Then got up again around 8:30pm. I did not manage to get my "5 minutes" in.
I'm feeling about 70% this morning, and not sure whether to get out and push myself, or just rest. If it's just allergies, then rest isn't going to do much, but if it's my body teetering on the edge of another URTI, pushing myself could end badly.
January 28, 2024 - Day 28 - Weigh-in
Total Weigh-ins: 5
Start weight: 164.3kg (362.2lb)
Last weight: 161.3kg (355.6lb)
Current weight: 161kg (354.9lb)
Weekly change: 0.3kg (0.7lb) loss
Goal change: 0.5kg (1.1lb) p/w loss
Actual change (avg): 0.825kg (1.8lb) p/w
Total change: 3.3kg (7.3lb) loss
Comments:
Well, it was going to hit at some point, but all is not quite as it seems.
One of the recommendations for weight-loss is not to weigh in daily, but over the years of doing it anyway, I've come to recognise that the scales can vary wildly, and it no longer has the emotional hit for me. It's just data, and I'm less interested in the number each day, than the overall trend.
Getting past that emotional hit has another effect though; I recognise that my weight can vary wildly from day-to-day.
Back in 2012 when I lost all that weight the first time around, when I had a week like this, where the weekly public weigh-in was a much smaller loss than expected, I'd be devastated.
The daily weigh-ins mean that I've seen my weight fluctuate, I know that a lot of it is water weight, and I also broke through the 160kg barrier yesterday for the first time since July 2023.
I also drank a lot of liquid yesterday, with over a litre of sugar-free lemon-mango Solo, which is something I'm low-key obsessed with right now (and isn't cola, yay!)
Some of these weigh-ins won't be what I hoped, and I'm OK with that. The trend, however, is down, which is what I planned.
Add comment