Weight – Accuracy
Posted: Thu 29 January, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Thoughts 4 Comments »While I was at the doctors on Monday, I opted for killing multiple birds with one stone, and also got an accurate weight measurement as well as starting off a request for a referral to a nutritionist so I can get some proper advice.
Weight-wise, I was actually quite surprised – I currently tip the scales at 140Kg. (22 stone, or just over 300 pounds) I’m not happy about it, obviously – there’s some way to go on the weightloss front for sure – but it means I was just about spot-on back in September when I estimated my own weight. Admittedly I felt like I’d put more on since then, but still, that’s what I am at the moment.
It also means that I’m one stone above where I was back at the start of 2005, which is a bit depressing. Then again, it also shows that if I do sod-all, my weight remains remarkably stable. Yes, stable at “fat bastard” level, but it’s not really going up and dwon from that point.
Still, I’m going to be working on losing some of it again – particularly now that I finally seem to be starting to be able to breathe OK again without coughing my chest up – throughout this year, and we’ll just have to see how it goes.
Doctorising
Posted: Wed 28 January, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Thoughts Leave a comment »I forgot to say yesterday, but the final result from the visit to the local GP on Monday was that I’m now on a weeks supply of 500mg Amoxicillin, taken three times a day.
To me that’s pretty much “Well there’s something wrong with you, but we don’t know what the shit it is, so we’ll whack it with antibiotics”. Fortunately, I don’t go to the doctors often enough to be overdosed on antibiotics, or even really getting resistant to any of them, so with luck it’ll help in this case.
At least the GP realised that it’s something I (finally) saw as being worth visiting them for though – he knows I don’t like and don’t trust GPs anyway, so the fact I’d gone to see him at all was worthy of note.
Mind you, for all the information, thought and incisive diagnosis I received, they might as well have said “it’s a virus, sod off”. And as Daisy said to me, “Virus” is just Latin for “We don’t know what the fuck it is”
Kebabs != Healthy
Posted: Tue 27 January, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Health, Thoughts 1 Comment »Now, hands up, who on this planet ever thought a kebab might be a healthy food?
No-one? Thought so.
So how the hell does this qualify as news anywhere on the planet, let alone on the BBC?
On a tangent, however, I do find it quite interesting/surprising that (to quote from the story) :
Six kebabs were found to include pork when it had not been declared as an ingredient. Two of the six were described as Halal – food or drink permitted for Muslims, which must not contain pork.
Admitting Defeat
Posted: Mon 26 January, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Health 1 Comment »After the multiple posts I’ve made about this fecking cold/cough/snotfest, I finally admitted defeat on Friday, and Herself rang up the doctors to make an appointment for me while she was working from home.
So at 5.10 today, I’m going to the bloody doctors.
I fully expect them to say some variant of “It’s a cold/virus, there’s eff all we can do, now on yer bike”. (I don’t have much regard for GPs, as may have been noticeable in the past) But at least I’ll be going, and getting the answer officially…
Sleep vs. Animals
Posted: Thu 22 January, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Health 3 Comments »I’m beginning to suspect that some of the reason for my having gone down with three consecutive colds over the last six weeks is due to having really badly disturbed sleep as part of my general life. And most of those disturbances are currently being caused by our fucking bastard animals.
Hound is a pain in the arse during the night – she has this habit of lying down, then scratching the floor in order to try and get comfortable. We’ve tried a number of things, including moving her basket around to wherever she’s currently sleeping before we go to bed (i.e. if she’s sleeping in the hall during the night, the basket goes in the hall) but that doesn’t work – she just goes somewhere else to scratch. We’ve taken the rug by the back door up at night – it’s one of her main scratching targets – but she just goes somewhere else. Regardless, come about 1.30am or so, one of us will end up putting her in her cage, at which point she’ll sleep. Oh, and before anyone suggests it, if you just put her in the cage at night, she’ll bark and bark ’til she’s let out. No-win situation ’til she’s gone in there at about half one.
Psycho Cat on the other hand “just” sleeps in the crook of my knees. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Except overnight he becomes like a lead weight, to the extent that I can’t easily move him. No idea how he does it, but it means that when I want to turn over, it wakes me up sufficiently to move consciously around him. Even whacking the furry little fucker with my leg (not kicking as such, but usually filed under “fortuitous collisions”) while I move doesn’t make him move. We’ve tried moving him to Herself’s side of the bed (and to the bedside chair, among other locations) but I’m warm, so he keeps coming back.
Last night was an even more extreme example. Because I’m horribly snotty, and it all pools up in the back of my throat, while asleep at the moment I a) snore, and b) cough. So on bad nights, I’ve been sleeping in the spare room. I don’t mind – it means Herself can get some sleep without me sounding like an asthmatic gorilla in the background, plus I don’t worry as much about the snoring.
Anyway, last night I went in to the spare room at about midnight, and closed the door. By that time Hound had already done her “scratching the floor to get comfortable” thing a couple of times and been yelled at, but that was generally OK.
Half an hour later, there’s scratching outside the door of the spare room. I yell at Hound, but it doesn’t stop. Eventually I get up, open the door. Yes, it’s fucking Psycho Cat, who also won’t give up on the scratching ’til he comes in. Resigned, I go back to the spare bed (a sofa-bed, I should explain – and thus rather narrow as I can’t be arsed pulling it all down at 1 in the morning) get under the quilt, and feel Psycho Cat jumping up onto my feet, then – yes – back into the crook of my knees.
Half an hour after that, Hound goes into terminal floor-scratching, gets yelled at, and I get up to put her in the cage. Which, of course, pissed off Psycho Cat, as it disturbed him from his comfy location.
I eventually got to sleep properly about two, half-two. (For obvious reasons, my last ‘awake’ thought didn’t involve checking the time) Psycho Cat was back behind my knees, Hound was in her cage, and Herself was in the other bed.
But when all that’s considered, it does make me think that it might work as at least some of the explanation of why I’m feeling so run-down…
Weighty Issues – Further Thoughts
Posted: Mon 5 January, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Introspective, Thoughts 9 Comments »Following on from my post about weight etc. at the end of last year (OK, less than a week ago) and the comments that came, I thought I’d add some more thoughts about it now we’re into 2009.
During my time off, I looked at Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR, not BMI), which is basically sufficient only for the functioning of the vital organs, but gives a rough idea of what calories the body burns just to keep going. And mine works out (on an admittedly rough working out, rather than the full-precision test) as being about 2,000 to 2,500 calories, depending on the equation used.
I don’t yet know what that means for me – if it’s anywhere even vaguely close to right, I assume it means that I should be taking on at least that amount of calories per day just to break even. I also assume that if my intake is less than that (and I’m pretty sure it’s significantly less than 2,500 per day) then my body thinks it’s starving, and thus stores everything as fat instead of using it or burning it up. That’s no surprise, it’s been put forward as an idea a couple of times over the years already.
The thing is though, that if I do attempt to eat more in accordance with things like BMR figures, and recommendations from gyms etc. I just put weight on. I know, it’s because the body still thinks it’s starving and is processing into fat for storage rather than actually using the damn calories, but it’s one of the most demoralising things around – I want to get fitter, not fatter. And no-one gives any idea of how long it’ll take for my body to get used to the idea of not being starved, and use the calories instead of store them. If it’s only a couple of weeks then fine – if it’s a couple of months or more, not so fine.
Later in the year, come spring-time, I might just get out on my bike again. That appeals a lot more than going running – although running does have a certain strange appeal, just not at my current weight – but well, we’ll see. I do want to get more use out of the bike (although there’s no fucking way I’m ever going to be cycling the 25 miles to/from the current job!) so we’ll see.
In the meantime, I’m working on going to the gym on a more regular basis. It’s currently not helped by the fact I’m still coughing up lumps of lung (or the contents thereof – I’m not doing analysis to find out which) which leaves me feeling like shit, but even getting back to the basic routine of gym attendance is probably a good thing in the long term, I guess.