This week I have spent many hours in hospital waiting rooms. This is not conducive to taking much in the way of exercise. Even our usual routine of a daily walk to the supermarket has suffered, since we did a larger shop one day on the way home. However, it has been a good week for health and fitness generally.
Dry January
It is now 17 days since my last alcoholic drink, so well over half way. The desire for wine at dinner time has somewhat subsided and I am enjoying the alternative. Usually water or some kind of fizzy low calorie drink. I used to be pretty addicted to Pepsi max but haven’t touched it for months, as I was worried about Aspartame. I am particularly enjoying a ginger beer drink, which is sweetened. However I am restricting myself to a can a day.
I am thinking seriously about how to manage alcohol consumption after I complete dry January. Probably, I need to be mainly a weekend drinker and even then cut back on what I was having before.
I will be breaking Dry January early as I finish my radiotherapy on 30th and intend to drink some wine to celebrate. Coincidentally there is a munch that night and luckily that will be in a pub. While it would be good to finish on 31st, some things need to be celebrated and the end of cancer treatment is one of them.
Fitbit stats
I don’t know if giving up alcohol is the cause, but my resting heart rate has dropped by 10 to 60 or below over the past couple of weeks. It had already dropped over the last few months since I became more rested and less anxious about much at all.
My hours of sleep are about the same, and I seem to wake the same number of times. But I feel more rested when I wake in the morning and best of all am not up to the toilet so much. This must be due to the no alcohol thing.
As for step count. We went to London this week for an art exhibition and that day I managed to clock up 11,000 steps. My average overall is 5500. This is way down on what I was doing when at work and isn’t something I can do much about until after Radiotherapy. But we are out this weekend to see some films, again in London, and will be walking around quite a bit. So I am hopeful of pushing up the average.
Diet and weight loss
In the main I have kept to my slimming group plan this week. We’ve eaten lots of extra vegetables, i’ve eaten fruit as snacks and not succumbed to chocolate. Not difficult since we don’t have any left. The result of this effort, plus no alcohol has resulted in a 2lb loss which puts me back to my August weight. My BMI is 31.1 so heading back to overweight rather than obese!
The tankini and new tops I ordered last week have arrived. These are all post mastectomy items with pockets for your prosthesis. The desire to look good in these garments is spurring me onwards.
Well done you!
Rebel xox