Tag: daily life

Story Time

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Hey, so do you guys want to hear about my dentist appointment yesterday? No? Cool, I’ll tell you!

Have you ever spent four hours at the dentist to walk out with: An aching set of gums

  1. A newly shaved (not numbed) tooth
  2. Another appointment card
  3. Another temporary crown that is not the temporary crown you came into the office with and yet also not the permanent crown you had been fitted with for the past four hours
  4. No more will to live
That was my day yesterday.

A little backstory, I have horrible white coat syndrome and I avoid any and all doctors until my only other option besides avoidance is death. Well, when I was 17 I had to have an emergency root canal. I was very far from numb, the dentist was very aggressive, the nurse made fun of me, after all that…

I didn’t go to the dentist for 7 years.

Fast forward to the top of 2018: I had just entered my mid-twenties and thus quarter-life-crisis-mode and decided that I needed to get my teeth cleaned. I went in and was told that I had 14 cavities and also had to get my crown replaced.

Which brings me to yesterday.

The past two years I’ve been living at the dentist and I’ve gotten all of my cavities fixed now (a lot of tears from a grown woman, but I did it) and the day came to get my new permanent crown put on.

Whew, that was a lot of backstory…

Well I got to the dentist office yesterday, sat in the chair, and the lady comes in and tries to numb me.

No no no, ma’am. This tooth is deader than my soul and you will not be sticking any needles into my mouth this day, kthnxbye.

Then I waited in the chair for about half an hour I guess while my non-numbed tooth got non-numb. Finally the nurse came in a swiftly yanked my temporary crown off and started with the gum poking…

Oh, cool, that’s what that feels like when I’m not numb? Love that.

… and the squeezing of “material” in between my tooth-nub and gums.

Oof.

It’s fine, I’m fine, I’m only slotted for an hour and a half and it’s already been an hour so this is almost over.

Low and behold she says “Okay, we’re going to make sure this crown fits good, take an x-ray or two, and then you’ll be good to go!”

Wonderful, thanks!

Crown on, gum poking, crown off

Crown on, gum poking, cotton biting, crown off

Crown on, x-ray, crown off

Cold water tooth spraying, oh my god my other teeth aren’t dead and that’s like biting straight into an ice cream cone, spit sucker, crown on, x-ray, crown off

Crown on, gum poking, polisher, crown off

We did this song and dance for another hour. They had given me six x-rays at that point and then she said, “Alright, I think that’s good. Let me get the Doctor and we’ll get it cemented on.” “Um, alrighty then. Thank you.”

And then I waited for half an hour.

The dentist comes in:

Crown on, gum poking, crown off

Crown on, edge shaving, crown off

“Hmm, okay let’s take a couple more x-rays” “Um, okay then, that’s fine.”

And then I waited for half an hour.

So apparently “the lab” isn’t that great because my crown did not fit down onto my tooth as smoothly as was necessary to avoid me coming back to the dentist more than twice a year. My dentist said that she would rather send it back and get it corrected. And because I trust my dentist with my life (she’s might be the best thing that ever happened to me) and I also hate to see her, I agreed. To reiterate: “I have horrible white coat syndrome and I avoid any and all doctors until my only other option besides avoidance is death.”

But then she said she was going to drill down some edges of my teeth to make sure the new new crown fits better.

Come again?

Yes, drill down some of my non-numbed teeth.

Should I have put a trigger warning on this blog? Is that what the kids do these days? Don’t worry, it didn’t hurt at all. I mean, my two teeth that she trimmed that don’t have root canals are ridiculously sensitive now, but it will subside.

And then I waited for half an hour.

That’s all that happened; they made me a new temporary and cemented that on and took another x-ray, yada yada. But what got to me was that I spent four hours at arguably my least favorite place getting effectively nothing accomplished.

I’m being dramatic. It wasn’t that bad. Don’t get me wrong, my gums and soul are very sore, but I’m grateful to have a dentist that is thorough enough and invested enough in my well-being that she’s willing to spend an extra three hours with me and not charge me for it. I’m pretty sure would give her any of my dispensable organs.

I just wanted to vent, y’all. If a girl can’t vent to strangers on her own website under the guise of entertainment, then what’s the point of being an adult?

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This is a full-on pajama onesie. This is truly adulting.

11 Day Progress

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Good morning, internet.

Alright, so I skipped a daily blog for yesterday. I’ve had some weird adult life stuff happen recently and it has sent my anxiety so far through the roof that it is on the moon. I also have to go to the dentist today, so yeah, I’m super excited. But that’s beside the point.

I said I’d update my numbers on day 10, so here’s my day 11 numbers update!

(I’m a dependable adult, yes, hi.)

Weight: 188.8 lbs (down 3 lbs)
Body Fat Percentage: 36.2% (The goal is 25%)
Neck: 35.5 cm
L Arm: 31 cm (up 1 cm)
R Arm: 31 cm (up 1 cm)
Chest: 109.5 cm (down 1.5 cm)
Waist: 100 cm (down 3 cm)
Hips: 113 cm
L Thigh: 59 cm
R Thigh: 59 cm

Everything seems to be going in the right direction! WooHoo!

But listen

Since the autumn solstice I’ve been slacking I’ve been sleeping. It’s so dark in the morning now and contrary to popular belief being a morning workout person does NOT commensurate being a morning person. They’re very different personality traits.

However, here I go… off to the gym… turning over a new leaf… in the dark.

Clarification

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Let me clarify.

I was thinking about yesterday’s blog all day long. I feel like it came across that I was telling you to pick the most efficient way to ONLY lose weight and to stop doing all other types of exercise. Which I know a lot of people interpret as “only do cardio”.

Now, I do more cardio and aerobic exercise than I was doing when I was trying to meet all of my big goals at the same time, but

I still weight train!

I love weight lifting. Keep in mind people, weight training is a great way to lose fat! Of course that’s still helping me gain little baby muscles, but that progress won’t be as prominent.

The shift I made was to weight train less often and less intensely to focus on losing weight instead of building muscles. I started to do more HIIT type weight lifting and compound movements instead of trying to tear down and build up one specific muscle.

Remember at the beginning of this 90 day adventure when I said that I split upper body and lower body days instead of specific body parts? Well that’s the reason!

If I do an “upper body” day as opposed to a “shoulder” day then I can incorporate some ab workouts or some compound tricep / bicep / back / shoulder movements or I can do plank modifications for a HIIT routine; I’m not limited to only shoulder movements.

I always used to think:

  • You walk on an inclined treadmill and use the elliptical to lose fat
  • You dead lift and do bicep curls as heavy as you can to gain muscle

And there was no in between.

But honestly, as long as you’re moving in a way that gets your heart rate up, it’ll help you lose weight. It’s really that simple. The other day I folded laundry so fast that I counted it as a workout warm-up. Seriously. It was that intense.

I’ll put together a workout for the blog sometime soon. (It won’t involve laundry.)

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Taking a mental health day from work and this is my current situation. ❤

Pick your Goal

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I don’t have a whole lot to say this morning. Maybe it’s my commitment to this 90 days or maybe it’s a detrimental personality trait that I want to get a blog up today anyway, regardless of the length or quality. Hmm. But this is actually something that’s on my mind a lot…

…So I listen to a lot of podcasts. I really hopped on that pod-trend. And one podcast in particular that I like to listen to while I’m at the gym is the “Let’s Run” Podcast by Pahla B Fitness. (She recently changed the name, so now it’s “Fitness Matters” if you’re looking for it.) Now I feel like her YouTube channel and her podcast is geared more towards the older crowd, 40 years and above, but she is one of the most inspiring podcasters that I’ve found.

The reason I bring her up though is because she has the sweetest voice I’ve ever heard but she is perilously realistic with the advice she chooses to give. One thing that I heard from her at the very beginning of my initial weight loss odyssey was essentially:

If you want many different things, such as to lose weight and gain muscle and run a 5K, you have to pick one at a time or you won’t be able to efficiently or fully accomplish any of them.

(Disclaimer: I know that is in a cool little quote box, but that is not a direct quote from her, it’s just my paraphrasing.)

You can see how alarming this would be to a dabbler such as myself. When she was talking about this she used those three specific goal examples and I happen to actually want all three of those things! At that time in my life I was

  • doing tons of cardio to drop the pounds,
  • weightlifting for an hour 5 days a week to gain those muscles,
  • and incorporating interval running a couple evenings a week to teach myself how to properly run any distance at all.

I’m not saying I took her word as gospel, but I was a teensy bit crushed.

Make no mistake I was definitely seeing results but I was also exhausted. Not just physically but emotionally, too. I knew deep down in my multitasker’s heart that it wasn’t sustainable. So I decided that Pahla was the excuse I would give myself to focus on weight loss instead of a bunch of different things.

I don’t know if I’m seeing better results yet but I do feel like I can sustain this lifestyle now for as long as it takes to be completely satisfied. I don’t feel like all my goals are a race to the finish line anymore (haha, pun!).

And that’s the thing about goals, health goals in particular: I enjoy working towards something! I’ve found that the times my anxiety flares up the most is when I lose my intention for things. (To be fair that’s a chicken and egg situation because I don’t know which of those causes the other.) So why do I feel like all of my fitness goals need to be finished immediately?

Full honesty here:

To wrap up this blog all nice and neatly I was trying to think of other examples of non-health goals that I have that I don’t feel like need to accomplish as quickly as possible and apparently I don’t have any. My brain has informed me that all of my ambitions on a very tight schedule. Cool. No wonder I’m a collection of procrastination and nervous energy wrapped in skin. Love that.

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We’re all works in progress anyway. No one really knows what they’re doing.

A Week of (mostly) Health

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Fun Fact: Did you know that 5:10pm in Abu Dhabi is 8:10am in Kentucky? Does that mean that I can drink while I watch this live F1 race? It’s 5 o’clock somewhere, amirite?

It’s been a whole week! (Yeah, I stopped doing the day numbers in the titles so I had to count. That’s going to get really confusing.)

A week in review:

  • I have acquired a Body Fat percentage scale (thanks Black Friday Amazon deals) so I will update all my numeric data next week sometime. Maybe on day 10, that’s a nice round number.
  • I think my body is now used to waking up early. It’s certainly not happy about it, but it’s used to it for the most part. I woke up naturally at 7am the other day. I mean, I went back to bed because I didn’t have to work that day, but I did wake up for a few minutes! I’d count that.
  • I’m in the routine of blogging every day! Woo!

I’ve worked out 4 of the past 6 days, eaten healthy 3 of the past 6 days (it was Thanksgiving, I have no regrets), and blogged every day! I think that’s a pretty good start.

*brushes off shoulder dramatically*

I’m feeling good about this. I’m feeling strong and committed.

Also, just so you all know, this website / blog won’t be entirely about health and weight loss. Fitness and health happens to be what I’m dabbling in right now and I can’t think about anything else.

This is what I’m talking about when I say I jump into the deep end with things; heath has consumed my life for the past couple months.

That novel I am writing? Nah, I gotta go to the gym.

Getting back to charcoal drawing? Nope, need to scour pinterest for healthy recipes.

Picking up my violin? I’ll do it later.

Gaming? Back burner.

I’m not proud of this quality. I’m trying to get better, which is part of the reason I started this blog. It wasn’t really intended for an audience (though I greatly appreciate anyone who gives a hoot about my daily ramblings), but it was a quick and dirty way to get my brain to do something besides obsess over my current obsession. I think it’s working! Finger’s crossed.

Okay, I’m going to watch this race now. Does anyone else watch Formula 1? Go Ricciardo! Woo!

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Lola’s body is far from used to waking up early.