Working On A Quirky Graph

The weekend has been fairly quiet, which is not upsetting in the least. I’ve been working on an afghan I’m way behind on, cleaning and rearranging my office and adding tchotchke touches to the kitchen. There were, of course, the prerequisite fireworks on New Year’s Eve, and although more subdued, it still prompted me to grab several thunder chews for Lou and keep petting him when larger booms were going off. In fact, the last couple of nights haven’t been extremely resting, trying to keep a dog who is getting increasingly antsy at weird noises comfortable, and persuade him to share my king size bed with me. I don’t want to have to keep him drugged so I’m going to have to look for alternatives. Meanwhile, we’ve been slowly increasing the lengths we have gone walking to see what is possible in wearing him out. So far, I haven’t found it.

Of course, Louie’s size (you can see how big he is compared to my brother-in-law’s pit who wasn’t playing well with Lou) does lend itself to me working harder to make sure I’m keeping him active and healthy.

While I’m tripling my step count and increasing my heart rate from this time last year, it doesn’t mean I’m seeing the health benefits I thought I would.

My doctor has referred me to a weight loss management doctor. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that. She mentioned bariatric surgery and the thought leaves me conflicted. While it is an option to keep my weight down, I’m not sure it matters if I’m already taking steps to eat less carbs, less food in general and increase my exercise minutes. Recently I’ve started doing more intermittent fasting. I have a love/hate relationship with the process. I already don’t eat a lot, so it isn’t a hardship to cut back on when I want to eat, but the hours aren’t exactly conducive to enjoying a beer after work (oh yeah I know how bad that is), or even eating after work. I may have to pull myself off the 16:8 or move it to an earlier time. Meanwhile I really need to get some blood work done to check all my levels. My sister is convinced it is my hormone levels, my doc believes my thyroid levels are off (which I’m more apt to buy as I’m just exhausted all the time) and I just want to get it fixed. I’ve already had to quit my creamer fix as the carbs I would ingest would be all the carbs I was allowed all day, but I’m trying to understand the tradeoff between being healthier and policing what I’m allowed to eat.

It’s been wicked cold this weekend. The back porch is frozen over and icy. I’m not even trying to venture out that way until the temp breaks above freezing. It also means I’m not as interested in taking long walks with my pup that I should be. But if we are both freezing and he’s the only one enjoying the walk I’m having trouble finding interest in walking one more block. Of course, the other hard part is the fact that as lovable as Lou is, he is a PITA to walk. He pulls constantly, doesn’t listen and is reactive to other dogs and squirrels. But, the onus is on me to get him to a place where he listens. I’ve been making changes in the house to make it safer for him to dance and he and I work on our walks. He doesn’t do a great job of walking next to me and I have to get him to listen. My times on these walks were getting a mile of walking in 20 minutes, even with stopping to pick up poop, but we have had to revise that down the last week while we work on listening to mom.

It’s a challenge for both of us. At the moment I’m not sure who will win.