Balance

I recently went to the doctor and discovered I was severely anemic. By severely, I mean - I already take a daily multivitamin containing 100% of my Daily Value (DV) of iron, as well as eating red meat and iron-rich vegetables, and I still fell into the "anemic" rating.

Now I'm on an iron supplement and I can't even begin to describe how much better I feel.

I originally went for fear of my family's personal genetic curse - hypothyroidism. It is not an exaggeration to tell you that it afflicts almost 100% of my female relatives on one parent's side. Luckily (for now, at least!) I've escaped that particular hurdle.

I am fat because I am fat!

Hypothyroidism and iron deficiency fatigue have strikingly similar characteristics. Joint pain, physical exhaustion, confusion, depression, lack of concentration/motivation. (And no wonder, with pain, exhaustion and depression would YOU be motivated??)

I am overweight, and not particularly proud of it. But since January I have been trying to do something about it. I even started a grueling diet and workout, in which I consumed 1,200-1,500 calories of strictly water, veggies and almost all lean proteins with a 3,000+ daily caloric burn. This would mean I would lose 1lb about every other day.

Well, actually I gained weight.

Mathematically, it doesn't make sense. Nutritionally... the fact is, while I wasn't "starving", my body thought it was (stupid body). So it held onto every tiny bit of every morsel of food that came into my body... so even though I was running/biking a combination of 6 miles a day, plus strength training and eating about half my output... I gained weight.

This is a symptom of hypothyroidism (which I mentioned I do not have). I read, for severe hypothyroidism, a person could need to burn NINETEEN THOUSAND calories a day to lose 1lb a week! How exhausting!

In fact, my doctor told me something I thought I'd never in a hobojillion years hear, "You need to exercise less and eat more." How funny! So now I range between 1,700 and 2,000 calories a day, and during my "exercise" portion of the day, I burn 600 instead of 1,000 calories. Throughout the day, I still end up burning around 3,000, because I walk the dog, and strength training benefits your metabolism for 24 hours afterward.

The good news is that I am now seeing progress. I had my 60-day fitness test today. In January I went to the gym, in February it was a big life upheaval and I didn't, and this month I've been really steady. I go three days and am off the fourth, so I end up there 5-6 days a week depending on how the "breaks" fit.

Soooo, for mostly this month's work, I've lost 6lbs of body fat! Yeah! I still have a lot to go (boo!). My 1-minute-do-as-many-sit-ups-as-you-can, went from 27 to 31 (4 increase!) My muscle endurance stayed the same - I can lift 100lbs once, but not 105 :( But the good news is, with the weight loss I had, that 100lbs I can STILL lift, is a greater percentage of my overall weight. At my "ideal" weight range, 100lbs is actually perfect (by that I mean average, because I am not a bodybuilder.) I lost a number of inches (enough to need both hands to count :D).

My heart is still strong and healthy and I lowered my resting heart rate by 2 beats a minute. (My heart doesn't need to work as hard to get oxygen to my body.)

Overall, I'm happy with my progress. I know the work I'm putting in (and how much easier EVERYTHING has gotten since I started taking iron supplements). As I jokingly say:

"When my books make it big and it's time for me to do the talk show tours and the interviews, I want to look goooooooood" ;)

But besides that, general health is important to me, and I want to take care of my body if I can. And as far as the changes since the iron supplement - I am so much more on the ball with writing! That's fantastic, seeing how it's my life :P

Any health stories anyone else would like to share?

That New Year's Thing

Well, I had a blast for New Year's Eve! We had literally all of our family in the surrounding area crammed into our tiny house (including us - 10 people and a dog!) Everybody brought way more food than they should have, so it went over quite well :) We all played Wits and Wagers as well as Mad Gab, before watching the ball drop.

Being decidedly of German descent, we did our age old tradition of pork and sauerkraut for New Year's dinner. The more sauerkraut you can cram down your gullet, the more GOOD luck you will supposedly have for the coming new year. (They had to make up SOME good excuse to eat rotted cabbage!)

For the record, I ate more sauerkraut this year than any other year previously. Despite the tears in my eyes. (And that's after mom pre-rinsed it and added brown sugar to take the edge off... and after mushing it in with my stuffing and mashed potatoes...) That means lots of good luck for me!

I have some pretty lofty goals this year - goals that are concrete and will probably take me the entire year to complete. Here are some, in no particular order:

1. Pen 500,000 publishable words. (Including but not limited to 6 IH episodes, 3 novels, 3 short stories.) This should be achievable if I write 5days/week, 2k/day!

2. Lose at least 40lbs. (The holidays were not kind to me :P... or rather, I was too kind to myself...)

3. At least, triple the royalties earned last year. (Which is to say, I still won't be making mortgage payments or swimming in my own pool of gold coins like Konrath ;D)

4. Try to go through every box I have in the house, and really throw away/condense it down.

5. Publish at least 1 new piece per month. Period - no excuses! (Compendiums and omnibuses excluded!)

So, what do you think of my short list? :)