Snoskred Health

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The Five Week Challenge – Week 1

6 Comments Posted on April 20, 2016April 18, 2016 by Snoskred

I’m involved with a fitness group on Facebook – long story best told another time. Recently the gauntlet was thrown down for a five week challenge – a freeform, choose your own challenge type of deal. After consulting my doctor, I picked –

500 calories burned or 5km walked

I thought I would do a weekly check in here on the blog, though we’re in week two of the challenge already now. So here are the things I did in week one, along with my comments! :)

Friday April 8th –

Tomorrow is already tomorrow, in Australia! Todays 5km on the treadmill. I will usually take a shot of the treadmill, or a screenshot of the Cardio Spark stuff from the pool, but I had done this before I knew about the challenge. Time was 52:54 – the extra time is water breaks while I pause the treadmill. I can’t drink and walk, lol. Todays walk was an interpretative dance set to episode 11 of Billions.

Saturday April 9th –

Here is my today walk. This is the first time we’ve been out to walk at Husky/Vincentia since February or so, was so nice! I SEEN dolphins, a beach mouse, beach birds, cyclists, children eating cheesecake, and a skateboarder gondolier!

Sunday April 10th –

Today’s “rest day” was brought to you by the season premiere of Deadliest Catch. As I wanted to go a bit slower for the rest day, I did some testing of my treadmill and discovered that the numbers do relate to km/hr. EG 4km/hr = 4.0, 5km/hr=5.0, 6km/hr=6.0

Monday April 11th –

Todays workout brought to you by Wahlburgers, TICDA and Sephyroth sending me a message that said “6k 59:55” plus, too legit to quit.

Tuesday April 12th –

Todays workout brought to you by – ep12 of Billions which is a show you should be watching if you are not already – Nutri Ninja which made a most awesome post workout shake YAY – and you all here, who make me want to push myself and documentation accordingly!

Wednesday April 13th –

Todays workout brought to you by – Deadliest Catch s12ep3 – Neelix over at Tinykittens who birthed some kittens today yay! – and the letter E, for exhausted. I really pushed – possibly slightly too far today. Tomorrow – Aqua Aerobics and I plan to burn 600 calories in the pool to allow for a slightly calorific dinner tomorrow.

Thursday April 14th –

Above you see the Cardio Spark track for Aqua Aerobics.

Above you see the Cardio Spark track for Aqua jogging. What I was doing was, running up and back the pool (50M total length of running) to get my heart rate up to 160 or so, then walking to cool it back down, then running again, etc.

Above you see the Cardio Spark tracks once Fitbit pulls them into itself. There was also a warmup while I waited for Aqua class to start, I burned 50 calories there, YAY.

Todays work out brought to you by swimming through a flabby armed spanking machine AKA Aqua Aerobics, school holidays where the kids have forgotten the pool exists THANK YOU JEEBUS, and Honey and Mustard Chicken which I wanted to make sure I had burned those calories before I even cook it, lol. 812 calories burned!

At the end of the week, we got a Fitbit Aria scale, and it gave me a number I had not seen thus far. 84kg. That is 11.2 lost since 1 January. Happy moments!

See you next week, for week 2! ;)

exercise, Fitbit

Adventures With Protein

22 Comments Posted on April 17, 2016February 15, 2018 by Snoskred

Did you know that in Australia, you can visit your GP and ask for a “wellness plan”. This will mean you are given X number of bulk-billed visits to a dietitian, and an exercise physiologist. For non Aussies, bulk billed translates to completely cost free to the patient.

For the first two months of 2016, I was doing pretty well on my own. I lost 10kg. After my diverticulitis adventure, I was struggling a little and I got stuck at 85kg for over a month. Part of that was the enforced “none at all” and then “just a little exercise” directive I was given.

Part of that was struggling to replace some of the foods that I was using to help me lose weight – eg nuts are mostly out other than softer nuts like macadamias and pecans, anything with seeds are mostly out eg tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, cucumber. I ended up replacing these better foods with things that were around the same amount of calories but much less nutritional value, like hot cross buns! I won’t lie, I love a hot cross bun.

Lunches were the most difficult to fix, because I was mostly having the same thing every day and it involved tomatoes. I’m someone who likes to stick to something, when I love it and it works for me.

So my doctor recommended the wellness plan option, and scheduled an appointment with the dietician, and the exercise physiologist – hereafter known as trainer, because that is too long to type, lol.

The weekend before the appointment we happened to be at Shellharbour and I wanted to visit the health food store there and get some advice about protein. I usually steer clear of these places because my experiences with them have been Not Great, Bob. Usually the ones around here are staffed by muscly, burly blokes who are not the brightest bulb on the tree. And this place was no exception to the rule. I’ll now recreate the discussion for you.

Me – “I want to get some protein. Just protein. I don’t want anything else in there. No stevia, no sweeteners, no extras. Just protein.”

Him – “Ok, well generally the reason they put those things in there is because protein tastes pretty bad on its own.”

Me – “It won’t be on its own, I will be flavouring it myself. With something like this.” (holds up powdered peanut butter which I already had found and was intending to purchase) “Or with cocoa powder, maybe a little maple syrup if it needs sweetening.”

Him – “Ok, then you could try this one. But I am warning you now, you will not like how it tastes.”

Me – “Is there maybe a smaller packet I could try, to see if I like it?”

Him – “This is the smallest size.”

Ok then, armed with 1kg of Whey Protein, and the powdered peanut butter, I left victorious. Momentarily. Because I really was not sure what I should do with this stuff. However I had my dietitian appointment coming up and I figured she could clue me in.

Of course the first thing I did when I got home was open the packet and taste this stuff. I can now tell you how protein tastes to me. Like absolutely nothing. It has no flavour at all. You could add it to anything and I would say the only thing you will notice is the occasional grainy, gritty texture. Because it does have a bit of a texture to it.

The second thing I did was make a shake with the peanut butter powder. OMG it tastes incredible. And I discovered you can get it at Coles, too! Which is good because I am going to be buying a lot of this. If you like peanut butter or peanuts, you will LOVE this stuff.

So I took these things along with me, plus my MyFitnessPal records for the past 3.5 months along to see the dietitian. She asked me a lot of questions and then she gave me absolute gold in return. Here are the goldest nuggets –

1. Beetroot would work well with ham and cream cheese on a rice cracker, for lunches. It is EPIC, I’m telling you. But she would like me to try and add tomatoes back in, because I had tolerated them fine for 40+ years, plus the seeds are pretty soft.

2. Protein shakes are best to have around 30 minutes after exercise. If I use 1 cup of milk that is a good place to get one of my daily serves of dairy. To begin with I should start with half a serving (15g = 13g protein) and see how that goes. If I feel like I need more, I can work my way up to 30g. The peanut butter powder has 4g protein for 1 tablespoon. So in one small shake, I get 17g protein.

She gave me some suggestions to try with the shakes, eg add greek yoghurt, freeze some bananas and add them in, strawberries and other berries should be fine if my blender is good enough.

Here is the protein shake recipe I am loving a lot.

40g RAW flavour WPI protein powder
1 tablespoon PB2 – Peanut butter powder
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
35g-40g frozen banana – I break them into pieces and freeze.
1 cup almond milk.

Updated 1 January 2018 – my current favourite recipe is –

40g RAW flavour WPI protein powder
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
35g-40g frozen banana – I break them into pieces and freeze.
100mls almond milk.
100mls brewed espresso coffee
1 frozen espresso coffee icecube.
(instant or filtered coffee will also work)

Sometimes I will leave the cocoa powder or the cinnamon out, depends how I am feeling that day. I find the banana sweetens it enough, but I have added a touch of maple sugar once to see what that was like. It wasn’t really needed.

Where Do I Get My Protein From?

I’ve tried all kinds of options for buying protein and by far the cheapest and most reasonable is Bulk Nutrients. They are based in Tasmania. I usually buy in bulk 5kg of protein at one time because I know I am going to use it. Just for an idea of how long that will last me – I use 40g in a shake and there is 1000g in a kilo. I can make 25 shakes from 1kg.

What Kind Of Protein Do I Buy?

I choose Whey Protein Isolate as it is a smaller molecule. I buy it in the raw flavour because all the flavoured versions have artificial sweetener and I don’t love the aftertaste of it. I don’t need to add sweetener and I add my own flavours. ;)

You might want to consider some of the other options available. There is a slightly larger molecule Whey Protein Concentrate available and it is a bit cheaper. I used to buy that and it was perfectly fine. They now have hemp protein in the raw flavour if you are looking for a vegan option – it is dairy and lactose free.

How Do I Blend It?

I was looking for a small cup blender specifically for these shakes because the better you blend them, the less texture of protein you notice. I ended up with the Nutri Ninja and I bought a couple of extra cups for it. The awesomeness I will be whizzing up in this thing is endless! When you go looking for a blender you want to make sure and get one that can handle ice and frozen bananas. Nutribullet is another one I looked at.

When Do I Eat It?

Usually I have my shake between 12pm-1pm and it leaves me feeling very full. I end up needing less dinner as a result, which is also an epic win.

How Am I Now?

Health wise I am back to where I was at the end of February. I am starting to feel more comfortable exercise wise and I’m ok with pushing myself a bit harder now.

The weight loss has started back on a downward trend, I’ve seen the number 84 on the scales now. My goal is 70kg by October however I am not sure how 70kg will work for me. We’ll wait and see.

My nutrition is a LOT better, and I find I do not want things I used to want. The closest I will get to a potato chip now is Vege Chips – and if you have not tried those, you should.

I’m still a shitty blog friend – and a shitty blogger – right now, and I am still deeply apologetic for that. On the other hand, I am a lot more fit and active than I was back when I was a good blog friend and good blogger, and that is something which is very important to me right now, especially with a general anesthetic for the colonoscopy in my near-ish future. I can’t be sorry about that – it is what I need to do for myself right now. :)

exercise, health, recipes

The Trouble With Me..

10 Comments Posted on March 24, 2016March 23, 2016 by Snoskred

Last you heard from me, I was in hospital. They let me out on the Wednesday as planned with antibiotics, plus strict food and exercise instructions – eg soft foods, ZERO exercise. I think the doctor could see the panic in my face when he said no exercise, and he told me very *very* clearly that right now my body needed to focus on healing itself and any exercise would divert resources away from that healing.

I did what I was told, including eating at least one dark chocolate serving a day (“It is ok to eat that, even on liquids only diet because it dissolves” said my doctor, did I mention I like him?) and was finally cleared for exercise on March 10th. I came up with a plan – on the first day I would do 3km, then if that felt ok, I’d do 3.5km, then if that felt ok, I’d do 4, 4.5, then settle in on 5k for a week. It did go ok, at first.

The trouble with me is, if I am going to do something I want to push the limits. On the first day of 5km, I felt like running a little. On the 2nd day of 5km, I felt like running a little more. That was when the pain began to return, but it just felt like a little wind, so I pushed through it. On the 3rd day I promised myself, only walking. I managed two minutes before I felt like running, and that day I felt ok until I got off the treadmill, then I had a lot of tummy pain.

The next day I was concerned enough by the pain to see my (new) doctor. I told her about the 5ks I’d been doing but perhaps I was not telling the story right. She got me to lay down and felt my stomach, then she said “So you’ve been exercising for what, a half an hour a day?”. Me “No, 5km usually takes me just under 50 minutes”. You should have seen how she looked at me, like I was out of my mind crazy.

She said “No, that is way too much for your body right now. You need to cut back to 30 minutes a day of exercise at most”. So I am time limited, and to be honest, it kinda sucks for the following reason – all the shows I like to watch while I exercise are 44-59 minutes long.

On the other side of the world, while I was ill, Sephyroth was experiencing his own health issues. Maybe he’ll tell you more about that on his blog but the quick version is – gallstones. He and I were both on the clear liquids then milky liquids then soft foods diets at the same time. My diet became all about trying to *get* to my 1200 calories a day without eating Not Great foods. That was a bit of a struggle, because a couple of poached eggs over mashed potato and sweet potato really is not a lot of calories, even if you add cheese and butter.

So when all is said and done, I’m down 10kg – 22 pounds – since January 1, which is pretty awesome. I’d like to lose another 10kg by June but at this stage getting the cardio health and fitness is more important to me than the numbers, as I will have a colonoscopy sometime in June. I’m happy with the way I have been adding more running into the treadmill time – I can run for 2 minutes out of every 5 without any trouble now.

In amongst all this, I talked Sephyroth into booking his ticket to Sydney for October this year at the somewhat insane price of under $1,200 return. He’s visiting for three weeks, which is brilliant. He’s smashing his weight loss goals right now, and I am hugely proud of him, as I always am. And he is also doing 5km on the treadmill in about the same amount of time as me, so he will be able to keep up with me when he gets here! YAYOYAY!

I need to learn some patience. I need to learn not to push through tummy pain. I need to learn that sometimes my body is telling me no for a reason. I need to get back to Aqua Aerobics, too. And I need to learn to be ok with not getting my 10,000 steps for a bit.

Plus, I need to return here and tell you the story of what happened, and the family history surrounding this particular illness, which I am not sure I ever mentioned here. I will endeavour to do this soon!

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my hospital post, I really appreciated them. I’m getting back to reading and commenting, so you should see me soon at your places.. :)

health

A Not Good Surprise.

14 Comments Posted on March 2, 2016March 1, 2016 by Snoskred

So I’m in hospital. Hopefully going to get out Wednesday afternoon been here since Monday. Writing this on my uncooperative tablet. It is a long story which i will type out once back at the home keyboard. The short story is diverticulitis. IV antibiotics is the reason i am not at home with a cat purring on me.

Good thing my goal was to get more healthy this year, and i will be ramping that up bigtime once back home.

I want to take a second to say thanks for reading my blog. I know I am a sucky blog friend this year and i apologize. Right now i need to focus on me, but i am still reading you all loud and clear. :) I will try to comment more soon.

health

Aqua Zumba

7 Comments Posted on February 24, 2016February 22, 2016 by Snoskred

I went to my first Aqua Aerobics class when I was 12 or 13, and right from the start, I really loved it. The trouble was, being a kid, I had to rely on my parents to get me to the pool because it was quite some distance from where we lived. At most I could get to one class a week.

Once I was old enough to drive, I also got a gym membership, surprisingly at a location that was a decent 20 minute drive from home, there was a gym with a pool at Goodwood, I lived nearer to Blackwood. I think they had aqua classes there more often which was why I chose it, plus they had a better selection of on land aerobics and I think, possibly a connection to another gym in Brighton which did a killer step aerobics class.

In the water, I am WAY better co-ordinated than I am on land. I have learned over the years how to make the water help me get those steps right. Aqua Aerobics has always been one of my most favourite workouts so it was one of the very first forms of exercise I turned to this year, with my eat less move more goal.

I started out with Aqua Lite, just to get back into the swing of things. The one thing I know about Aqua Aerobics is – no matter how hard I push myself, I will not be in pain the next day. In the water I can do things that would simply be impossible on land. I am strong.

I did Aqua Lite for a couple of weeks, until I landed in a class with a new instructor who pulled me aside after the class was over and said “Aqua Lite is way too easy for you, you need to come to my High Intensity class on a Wednesday night”. I did not even know such a class existed because it does not appear on the website for the aquatic centre at all, so I was glad she told me. They call it a HIIT class.

Even so, I felt like I was not yet ready for high intensity, and did two more Lite classes instead.. then Wednesday appeared and my inner demons (angel?) said.. Go to HIIT. And go I did. I LOVED IT.

There is something about that instructor, too. She really pushes me to my limits. I know this because after two weeks of Wednesday HIIT, I went to a HIIT class with a different instructor at way-early-o-clock and it was one of the least effective workouts I have ever done.

Depressed after this non-workout on a Monday, I decided to give Aqua Zumba a try on Tuesday. Our local Aqua Zumba instructor is fantastic – she knows everyones faces and so immediately knows when someone is new to the class. She spotted me in the pool and spoke to me, calling over a few other new faces she had seen. She told us a little about the class, checked in to make sure we did not have injuries, and then told us not to worry too much about getting the exact steps right, just to try and follow along and have fun.

I have tried Zumba on land, and I was deeply terrible at it. It seemed to me like I was just as bad at it, in the water. But the instructor found me after the class and checked in with me, and I was honest, I said I did not think it was for me because I was pretty bad at it. She said “Just trust me and try one more class, you’ll be surprised”. She told me that each week for four weeks, the music and the steps in the class are exactly the same, then she teaches the class two new routines, which replace two of the other ones for the next four weeks.

A week later, I was surprised to find myself packing up my pool bag and heading off to Aqua Zumba again.. and I was even more surprised to find that magically in the space of a week, I somehow became very good at it, and the workout I got seemed to be up there with a HIIT class.

The instructor made sure to find me afterwards and ask how it went, and I told her I was glad I had trusted her, because not only did I get a great workout but I had a HUGE amount of fun as well. I said once I knew what the steps were, I was better able to do them.

That week, I went to HIIT plus a second Aqua Zumba class as well. On that occasion I found myself in slightly deeper water than usual, which hampered my steps. So now I know what height the water needs to be at, for me to get the better workout.

I also added a new fitness tracker to my stable of tools – the TomTom Cardio Spark, which is able to go in the pool with me as Fitbit cannot do that.. Here is the track from the deeper water Zumba class, which starts around 20 minutes into this track. This workout burned 474 calories and I had a lot of fun! Click for a larger view. The ble arrow is where the class starts.

Just to compare, here is an Aqua Lite track – the blue arrows show where the class starts and ends. I did some laps afterwards.

Here is a Fitbit track from a walk around the same duration –

It has been 7 weeks since I began this fitness journey. On average I have lost 1 kilo (2.2 pounds) each week. I started out struggling to run for 30 seconds on the treadmill – yesterday out of my 30 minutes on the treadmill, 11 of those were running minutes. I give a lot of credit to the Aqua workouts for this huge improvement in cardio ability.

Many people think Aqua Aerobics are lame, something to mock, a workout only for the elderly. They are, quite simply, dead wrong. It has been my personal experience that Aqua Aerobics is one of the better cardio workouts you can do.

Aqua Aerobics are also LOADS of fun, which is important when you want to exercise. If I am not enjoying myself, I am less likely to keep exercising. :)

exercise

Fitbit – Part One

8 Comments Posted on January 29, 2016January 28, 2016 by Snoskred

Remember earlier this year when I posted about my main goal for 2016? I said I would write about the Fitbit once I had it a little longer. Today it is exactly one month since I got this nifty device and I am loving it.

There are a lot of different aspects to the Fitbit, so I am not even going to try and cover them all in the one post. I’ll start off by telling you a little bit about what the Fitbit is, then I will talk about some of the ways that the Fitbit has inspired me to get moving again, and then tell you what I love and do not love about it.

What Is Fitbit?

Fitbit is an activity tracking device. You wear it on your wrist. Depending on which model you choose, it can track other things as well. I wanted to keep an eye on my heart rate especially when exercising, so I chose the Fitbit Charge HR. It cost $124 to purchase in the Boxing Day sales.

Fitbit reports the data it gathers back to your smartphone and/or your computer. You have a dashboard, which contains many different fields, and you can move the fields around to get it looking how you want.

The wrist device itself has a very small LED display which you can tap to switch between the time, steps so far, heart rate, KMs for the day, and calories burned. You can set it so that a flick of your wrist shows you the current time. I deeply love that feature!

Fitbit Makes Me –

Park that bit further away.

When you know you have a daily goal of 10,000 steps, you begin to find opportunities to add them in to your day. There is this local meat place which has a carpark of evilness, so now I park in a street away from the carpark and walk there instead. I discovered that I MUCH prefer this to driving in and trying to find a park and negotiating every other person in the tiny and badly designed carpark.

Get on the treadmill.

I’ve had this treadmill sitting here next to me for over a year now. There were times when I was very disciplined and would get on it every day, and there were times when I ignored it totally. Now I am on it most days, even if only for 15 minutes to get those last few missing steps.

Get out and about.

I’d much rather walk out at Huskisson and Vincentia than on the treadmill. Since the start of 2016, I have managed to get down there on average twice a week, sometimes 3-4 times.

Be Less Rigid

In 2015, I would only get on the treadmill first thing in the morning, before my shower. This meant if I did not feel like exercise then, it would get skipped. Now, with Fitbit, I have all day to get my steps in. If I do not feel like it first thing in the morning, I’ll take a shower, do what I feel like, and get on the treadmill in the afternoon, then take a second shower if I need it. I’ve even exercised as late as 9:30 or 10pm, if I needed more steps.

What I Love About Fitbit –

Convenience –

It is so simple! Wearing this one item on my wrist gives me SO much information about myself and my health, from heart rate at different times of the day right up to how well I slept.

Reminder –

Fitbit is there on my wrist 24/7 reminding me to make better choices – whether it be move more or eat less.

Tap To Know –

Three quick taps at any time of day gets me my current heart rate. This is useful mid-treadmill when I want to see if I am pushing too hard.

Great Workout Tracking

Look at all the info Fitbit collected on my walk today!

Above is heart rate and which zones you are in during your work out. The very low dips – the first one is where I stretch after doing my slow warm up 2 mins, then there are 2 drink breaks in there.

Above shows calorie burn, and the impact of his exercise on my day.

Resting Heart Rate

Fitbit tracks my resting heart rate. You can see it has dropped significantly since I started my journey to fitness on 29 December. You can also see it went back up a little – I had a cold which I was fighting at that time.

What I Don’t Love About Fitbit –

Fitbit Can’t Go Swimming

I have always loved the pool – swimming and aqua aerobics are my first two choices of exercise, even above walking and kayaking. However Fitbit is unable to join me there – which means all the information I rely on when I exercise, like heart rate and calories burned is also unavailable to me.

Fitbit Needs Regular Cleaning

Not that cleaning is a problem for this germophobe, but whenever I do it clean it – usually once a day, twice if necessary – I worry that I might accidentally murder it. Fitbit is splash proof but not water proof.

Fitbit Needs To Be Placed Correctly

In order to measure your heart rate, Fitbit has to be in the right place. Sometimes I have had trouble putting it in the right place or I have bumped it slightly and there goes my heart rate measurements, sometimes for hours because I did not know it wasn’t measuring it. I wish it would beep or flash when it wasn’t picking up my heart rate so I could adjust it.

Fitbit Took Some Getting Used To

I found sleeping with it on extremely weird to begin with. However, I stuck with it and I got used to it, and I consider the data gained VERY useful – I’ll talk more about the data in another post.

Overall –

I love my Fitbit, and I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to get moving. Just remember what I said about lessons learned in my Main Goal post.

exercise, Fitbit, health, Making Choices

The Rules

11 Comments Posted on January 18, 2016January 17, 2016 by Snoskred

Imagine for a moment that all the road rules you know were suddenly gone, and a series of new rules had taken their place, however you have no idea what those rules are. What do you think your chances would be of getting from point A to point B without breaking any rules?

How would you feel to have everything you thought you knew pulled out from under your feet as a surprise to yourself? That is what life can often feel like for someone with Asperger Syndrome.

If you spend any time with me, you will quickly discover that I love rules, procedures, policies and especially, Having These Things Written Down. I suspect it is the same for many who are diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. I can’t speak for all Aspies, of course. The ones I know personally feel similarly to me.

There is one important reason I prefer rules to be Written Down, VS just unwritten type rules. It has been my experience that unwritten rules change regularly. People would say to me X is ok, so I would do X, and all of a sudden guess what? X is not ok. X will in fact get me in a lot of trouble, maybe even fired from a job.

Even worse than those rules are the rules that Do Not Exist Until You Break Them. Today I am going to tell you about one such incident.

I worked for an insurance agency once, in a call centre taking calls. I worked the late shift, midday to 8pm, or 11 to 7pm. The office was split over two floors and once 5pm hit, the late shift people would have to move downstairs for security reasons.

I had been working at this place nearly 6 months, and I had a desk I would always use when we moved downstairs. On this particular day, the computer would not work at that desk. Myself and my team leader spent nearly 20 minutes trying to work out what was wrong with it to no avail, so she said to pick another desk. I just went to the next closest one.

I did *not* know that I had Asperger Syndrome back then – nor did I know about light sensitivity. This particular desk had a lighting issue, for me. When I sat there, a light was shining directly into my eyes. I actually could not see the computer screen very well and after about 10 minutes of working there a headache began to develop.

Once I got off my call, I went over to the team leader and said “I’m going to have to move again, that light there is shining in my eyes”. She said “Here, put on my baseball cap, see if that fixes it so you won’t have to move”. I did what I was told and it worked – the light was no longer a problem. I finished my shift and went home.

At my 6 month probation review, I was told they wanted to extend my probation as they had some “issues” with me. I was told that my personality was a problem for them. I asked too many questions, and I “talked back” – interpretation, I tried to discuss the answers I was given so I would understand them better. Those ones, I won’t go into right now – other than to say these were all Asperger related, I can see that now.

The fourth and final issue was so petty, ridiculous, and stupid. I almost quit on the spot.

The fourth issue was that I was seen by management wearing a hat inside. I was not given a chance to discuss these issues at the meeting – which was held on a Friday afternoon – I was told to go home and think about what they had said, and return for another meeting on the following Monday to discuss things further and sign an agreement to extend my probation for an extra 6 months.

I went home absolutely furious – hello, there were no rules about hats that I had been told about. Furthermore, it was not even MY hat, and I was TOLD to wear it by the team leader! When I got home, I dug out the dress code from the code of conduct. There was nothing about hats.

I remember having an major meltdown that evening. I do not remember specifics but I do remember being curled in a ball on the floor, crying and screaming. I do remember thinking I had enjoyed that job so much and now I never wanted to go back there.

By Monday, cooler heads had prevailed somewhat. I went into that meeting ready to sign whatever they wanted me to sign – but having applied for a multitude of other jobs over the weekend. I was fully prepared to argue the hat issue, having spoken to the team leader involved who was also furious that had been raised, and I was ready to discuss all the other issues as well.

Mostly I felt that I wanted to keep my head down until I could find another job and get the heck out of there. Sometimes incidents like this show you who people are, and these people were not people I wanted to be involved with long term.

Three months later – three months where it was Not Ok to be ME every single work day, remember my personality was a problem for them – I resigned and was out of there. They weren’t paying very well, anyway!

This was not the first time this kind of thing has happened to me, nor was it the last. I have finally got to a point where I would rather not put myself out there to be rejected yet another time, even though I follow any written rules more than 99% of other people would – because I love the rules, you see.

If they tell me I can’t use my mobile phone at work, I will never take it out of my handbag. If they tell me I can’t use the internet for personal stuff, I never ever will, while people around me are breaking these rules constantly and my team leader is Facebooking up a storm even though Facebook is Not Allowed.

This is one reason computer games can be so reassuring and appealing for me – once I know the rules of a computer game, they rarely change. This is also why I need to be the person making – and enforcing – the rules in future.

Previous posts in this series – I was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, then we talked about My Aspie Super Powers and My Aspie Limitations – then I spoke about a concept with The Cup Is Full.

Angry Snoskred, Asperger Syndrome, mistakes I made

My Main Goal For 2016

15 Comments Posted on January 8, 2016January 8, 2016 by Snoskred

I have a few things I would like to achieve this year. There is one major goal, though – and it is –

Eat Less, Move More.

This is a pretty simple goal. It needs to happen. My weight has been quietly creeping up to a place I am not a fan of. At the start of January, I weighed in at 95.2kg – (209.88 pounds) – if I let things continue this way, I’d soon be over 100kgs.

The Other Half and I bought ourselves the Fitbit Charge HR for Christmas. We got them on special for $124 each. This little gadget has changed my life in a good way – I will do a post all about it later this month once I have been using it a little longer. Here is a quick look at the dashboard, which you will see in more detail in my upcoming post. :)

As a part of the Fitbit thing, I’m also tracking my food intake. I was doing it with the inbuilt Fitbit food logging software, but I have now switched to MyFitnessPal. You can find me here – MyFitnessPal & Fitbit.

We bought the Fitbits on Tuesday, so I weigh in on Tuesday mornings and in the first week I lost 1.3kg (2.86 pounds).

Of course one of the very first things we did was go out for a long walk, during which I managed to pinch a nerve in my foot, making it difficult to get my 10,000 steps a day for that first week. In fact for two days I had to rest and limp about – then I injured it again and had to take another rest day. That has been quite frustrating. However even on a rest day I managed 6468 steps which is pretty decent.

I know I have a couple of readers who have set themselves the same goal and at least one thinking about buying themselves a Fitbit, so here are my lessons learned after one week.

Start Out Slow.

As soon as you get that Fitbit, you’ll want to get moving. However if you do that, you will not have a baseline to know how many steps you would usually do in a day. So my advice the first day is – do what you would do on a regular day.

Be Careful

An injury will hinder your progress and frustrate you, so rather than go all out, ramp up your exercise slowly. If you are not doing 10,000 steps to begin with, aim to add a thousand steps each day.

Work It Out

It is useful to figure out how many steps you get from things you do regularly. For example, if I need to run to the shops, it will be 2,000 steps or so. A shower is usually 200-300 steps – I keep mine on, you don’t have to, of course. Why is this important?

Step Budget

If you know that you have to do grocery shopping tomorrow, and you know that is going to be around 2,000 steps, you might want to cut back on your other activities.

For example – I like to get on the treadmill and do a walk but I will always stop around 8,000 steps because I know the rest of my daily doings (dinner, cleaning, etc) will be around 2,000 steps. On the day you see pictured above, we discovered we did not have an essential dinner ingredient, so off to the shops we went – and I went way over on my steps for that day.

Not that going over 10,000 steps is a major problem, but at this stage with the injury I really want to try and stick to 10,000 -11,000 a day.

Sleep Is Interesting

Sleep stats, that is. Above you see one of my best nights of sleep since getting the Fitbit. Interestingly, I had stayed up late reading a truly great book. When I did go to sleep, I was out solidly for 4 hours. I woke up so refreshed the next morning.

This sleep was less good but it seems like this is a more normal sleep for me.

Fitbit Thoughts

Why does it seem like this is going to work well for me? Putting this little tracking band on my wrist has inspired me to get moving and watch my food intake. Is it because, in a world where everything can be tracked, tracking the human body tells us more about ourselves? I haven’t logged food to this extent before and I am finding it to suit my Aspie, slightly OCD nature.

Saying It Out Loud

The major reason I am posting this here is to hold myself accountable. There is always the danger I could become complacent and fall off the eat less, move more wagon. I’ll update here once a month.

Over To You

Did you make any goals for 2016? Do you fitbit or myfitnesspal? :)

2016 Goal, exercise, health, Making Choices, moving forward

The Cup Is Full

8 Comments Posted on December 21, 2015December 20, 2015 by Snoskred

Once I was finally diagnosed a few years ago – in my mid thirties so way too late to be useful in school days! – my psychologist explained a new concept to me.

She explained it like this – Every human being has a cup of human interaction. Many humans rarely fill this cup. They could go out to work all day, and social events every night, and still be happy to go back for more.

For some of us with Aspergers – and some without, this cup is filled on a regular basis. When my cup of human interaction was full, I needed to be in a safe place with only trusted humans around me in order to empty the cup before I could be around the other humans again.

I suddenly had a huge breakthrough. I totally understood why I simply could not go to school sometimes – it also had happened to me with work as well. Dealing with the “normal” people was sometimes so tiring, exhausting even.. and I just needed peace time to recharge my batteries. Renee from About A Bugg explains more about the cup concept here.

I think what I have learned in the years since my diagnosis about how to manage the cup is – it is all about timing for me. When I worked five x8 hour days, that was simply too much for my cup. I can do a nine day fortnight in the right circumstances. Four or five 6 hour days works for me. I can even do six or seven 6 hour days in a row, as long as I get a couple of days off afterwards.

However, if I have a bad interaction on day 1, that is going to limit my cup capacity until my next day off. And usually a bad interaction leads to further bad interactions, plus, even in my downtime I will be turning that bad interaction over and over in my mind, trying to figure out where I went wrong.

So I think a useful point is – anything that can distract me from turning that interaction over in my mind is like gold, and for me that has always been computer games. My cup will empty in half the time if I can spend it playing a game that I love.

Theme Hospital – one of my favourite Good Old Games.

But come bedtime, there it is again.. what I usually do is read until I am too tired to keep reading. Even if it is a book I know back to front (and could totally write out from memory!) it takes my mind off That Thing, which is, again, like gold.

It is completely exhausting to try to be “normal” for 40 hours a week. It is even worse when someone tells you “it is ok to be who you really are, truly, trust me and be yourself” because the actual truth is, it is not ok to be who I am in a workplace. It is not ok to say what I really think. And while I think I have become good at pretending, they can *always* tell that I am holding back, because my poker face pretty much sucks.

So then I do the thing they have asked me to do – be myself – and all of a sudden, my personality is a “problem”. Why anyone thinks that is ok to say to someone.. I do not know. But that has happened to me more than once, sadly. I even got asked to lengthen my probation and the fact that my personality was a problem was put in writing for me to sign!

I will never, ever, be the real me in a workplace again. No matter how many people try to tell me to “be myself” – every past experience has taught me that it is NOT OK TO BE MYSELF. I will never blame myself for keeping my real self 100% hidden away from the “normal” people. They have proven to me that they cannot – or will not – or refuse to – accept the real me.

Previous posts in this series – I was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, then we talked about My Aspie Super Powers and My Aspie Limitations.

Asperger Syndrome

Recent PINCHme Samples

4 Comments Posted on December 7, 2015December 4, 2015 by Snoskred

In December of 2014 I wrote about PINCHme samples – I also wrote this post about how *not* to sample – AKA don’t be stingy. Today I am giving you an update on recent samples I have received.

Over winter 2015 things went very quiet at PINCHme with not many samples released at all. They picked back up again in late September. The first sample they sent me was by far the least stingy and most awesome sample ever – a full sized Mitchum Clinical Deodorant.. when I next visited the shops I made sure to look for it on the shelf and was quite taken aback when I saw this –

I’ve been using it every second day since I got it and I have to say, it is pretty amazing. It smells wonderful, too. How does one use a 48 hour antiperspirant when one showers every day, one thought? I tested it out, still having my daily shower as usual on the second day and then *not* putting anything on and fate made sure I tried this on the hottest day we’ve had thus far – 35 degrees, no sweat, no smells.

It feels weird, not putting anything on after a shower, but I have got used to it. You only need to use the tiniest amount of this stuff – one click of the dial at the bottom per armpit. I’ve been using it every second day for over a month now and I still have over half a container left. Normally I would go through one roll on per month.

I knew I’d heard things about aluminium in antiperspirants so when I checked the ingredients I was a little unsure, but I did some research into that and it is all urban myths as far as I can see. I will definitely be buying this one.

Good job on not being stingy, Mitchum! In fact you did such a good job of not being stingy you have won two customers, I bought a similar product for The Other Half when I saw them on special recently.

So here we have some Dynamo clothes washing liquid – I gave this a legit trial with some clothes which were stained that have been awaiting stain removal. It removed almost all the stains. I’m keeping the second packet for more stains, and will consider purchasing a small amount of this to keep on hand. One small negative – our front load washer does not have anything to stop the liquid running right into the machine, so the detergent went right in.

There is also a Schick Quattro razor. I’m not a user of razors very often – I prefer waxing – plus I am unlikely to use anything with 4 blades as a regular thing, but I’ll give it a try. Anything more than two blades reminds me of this little ad from The D Generation

There is a Chux magic eraser – now I just have to find something to use that on! – and some Fancy Feast which the cats were big fans of. They would be even greater fans if only I would follow these feeding instructions –

Grumpy is 5kg, so that would be 7.5 pouches a day. This would be an increase of 7 pouches a day as the kitties get half a pouch/tin of wet food each morning. At 1.42 per pouch, this would cost me $10.65 a day in cat food! Unless I could find it on special somewhere..

If I followed these instructions, Grumpy would soon be 10kg, in which case I would have to feed her 15 pouches. Exponential growth! If I showed these feeding instructions to my vet, who recently told us our kitties need to watch their weight, she would probably fall on the floor laughing. It makes me wonder – is anyone out there actually reading and following those instructions? That would be very bad. :/

I find PINCHme free samples to be interesting, I always love receiving mail and sometimes the samples are a source of great products we end up loving and buying. We are still using Fairy Platinum dishwasher tablets and we love them, I am a big fan of the Mitchum deodorant..

Samples are usually released @PINCHme on Tuesdays at mid-day. They sell out very quickly, so you want to be logged in at 11:58am and ready to go. Sometimes they have surprise samples on other days, as well.

You can sign up for PINCHme here and I do not receive anything for sending you there, sadly. They ought to have a decent referral program. They do have one but it is linked to the samples which usually sell out within minutes, plus there is some blather about having to be logged in when you refer someone.

FYI the usual statements apply – nobody paid me to write this post, I do receive free samples from PINCHme but they are samples anyone can receive if they are a member and they sign in at the right time to claim a sample.

customer feedback, exercise, kitties, PINCHme

500 calories burned *or* 5km walked