Muscles And Stuff

 

I went to the gym yesterday to work out with the weights and machines for the first time since Friday I think so I am feeling it today, but it feels good. I did a good balance. I hope that I’m able to continue to walk that line between challenging enough to be sore but easy enough not to do anything that would limit my range of motion for days. I won’t get stronger if I don’t challenge myself and as much as I never thought I’d say this, I do want to get stronger. Or at least I do want to build muscle. I think it would be good for my metabolism too, at least that’s what they tell me. The nurse says maintaining muscle does burn more calories than… I guess not having muscles. Maybe I should say, the more muscle mass you build, the more calories you use to build and maintain them.

I was at the gym, and there was this “mythbuster” poster that said, “muscle doesn’t weigh more than fat!” It basically went on to say that 5 pounds of fat are the same weight as five pounds of muscle because they both weigh five pounds. The poster said that you could say that muscle was heavier by volume or that it was denser than fat. It had a picture of a replica of five pounds of fat behind five pounds of muscle so that you could see the difference in their shape and size. It was a pretty big difference. The other thing they pointed out, which I’d never really thought of, was that muscle is smooth while fat is more “lumpy” which means the shape of a person can be very different when there’s more muscle than when there’s more fat. That makes sense, of course, but I just hadn’t ever thought about it.

I plan to go to the gym after work today, again, which I’m looking forward to. Never thought I’d say that either. It’s another time where I pretty much turn off my notifications and just get to be for a little while without everything and everyone else pressing in.

I do need to make some boundaries for myself. I cannot keep letting people take up so much of my energy.

 

Anyway, back to work.

Phone Notifications

So, I’ve turned off nearly all the notifications on my phone except like phone calls and my bill reminders. I figure that way at least my phone isn’t constantly telling me every single thing all the time that comes through. I hate seeing the little red badges and similar, so I have to check the app to make it go away, and then I get sucked in. I’m hoping turning off the notifications will help me check my phone with intention rather than out of compulsion. If I can check my phone with purpose, maybe I won’t end up having quite so much of my time eaten by the rabbit hole of messages, etc. I guess we’ll see how this goes.

I’m glad I left my phone at work the other day. I think it’s really helping me reevaluate how to handle my phone time. I was going to say screen time, but I usually write by typing so that wouldn’t really be accurate.

I don’t want to end up missing important things, but I spending two hours texting and messaging people in the evenings and getting almost nothing else done is just not making me happy. I love my friends, I really do, but I need a break from socializing after spending my whole work day socializing. Especially since my mom doesn’t really get to socialize at all during the day making me nearly her only outlet. That means I’m trying to support her entire desire to be sociable and interact with people and when I tell you that’s too much, I mean IT IS TOO DAMNED MUCH FOR ONE PERSON. As much as Dad can be frustrating, it will be nice to have him around more to take on some of that burden--at least I hope he will.

I should really consider moving out.

Oh, and that book I didn’t think I get approved for that I requested from NetGalley for shits and giggles because I couldn’t help myself? Yeah, I got approved. I keep looking over it to see if maybe it was just a first chapter or something like that, but it seems like I got access to the whole book. The entire book! That doesn’t even come out until sometime in like JUNE or something.

I have so many, many things to read and do. One of my other goals is to do a pull-up or chin-up without assistance. I have literally never, not once in my entire life, not even in school been able to do a pull-up or chin up. I’d really like to get to the point where I can do a couple. I’ve been using the assisted dip thing to do practice ones at the gym. Right now, I’m offsetting my weight with … weights. The thing says 220 pounds, but from what I was reading that means that you’re actually offsetting about half of that in your actual weight. So 220 pounds means counteracting 110 pounds. I had zero upper body strength when I started this endeavor. I could barely do 4 like that when I started a few weeks ago. I can almost do two solid sets of five (it’s like five and then four and a half right now), but considering it’s only been about four weeks, I’m taking that as a win. Next week, I’m going to take the offset weight down to 200 and try to do five. Then build up to 10 of those. So that in a couple more weeks I can take another set of weights off, etcetera etcetera etcetera. I imagine it’s going to take me about a year to get there, but that’s my goal. In a year, I want to be able to do a pull-up or a chin up. I’m not 100% what I would need to do differently for each one, but if I can pull my body weight up with nothing but the strength of my arms, I really don’t care what the angle is. I figure once I get to the point I can do one of them, I can make the next goal the ability to do the other if getting me one doesn’t get me to the other.

Oh well, more later. I need to get ready for tomorrow.