Apple Watch Out – It’s a Trap!

January 28, 2021 By Lise Quintana in autism, personal, practical advice Tags: Apple Watch, attention economy, autism, stress 1 Comment

Let’s talk about my day. I’ve got a lot of tasks I need to get done every day, and most of them require sitting for stretches of time. Editing a half hour of audio can take up to three hours. Writing 5000 words can take all day. And then there’s writing software requirements documentation, which is its own little hell. To make things worse, if someone or something interrupts me, it takes me some time to get back into the flow of things, because switching contexts is expensive.

I already carry around a ton of guilt about what I’m doing versus what I’m not doing. If I’m sitting down writing, I’m freaking out that I’m not exercising, or doing software requirements, or editing a podcast. If I’m out exercising, I’m thinking about the work sitting waiting for me at home. And if I’m doing any of those things, I’m not doing my own writing, and I feel like a failure pretty much every second of every day for that.

And Apple Watch is right there to tell me all about it. But not just that – it also tells me when there’s someone at my front door, when my mother opens her garage door 70 miles away, when anyone texts me, when someone posts something to the work Slack account, when my Amazon package has shipped, when my Amazon package has been delivered, and, at 10 minutes to the hour every hour, that I should stand up and walk around.

It wasn’t that bad when I first got it, but the more companies plug themselves into my devices, the more everyone is constantly trying to get my attention, and it’s not like I can manufacture any more of that. It’s starting to affect my mental health. I realized that when I’m physically ill, I tend not to put my watch on because I want to be able to sleep all day without having it buzz me every hour to tell me to walk around. When I’m deep into writing, I take it off because I don’t want to have to respond to people’s texts or phone calls.

What if I just took it off and never put it back on? What happens when the nonstop notifications stop? I don’t need my watch to tell me when to exercise. I don’t need it to tell me what tasks I have to do. And if Apple Pay is that important to me, I still have it on my phone. I didn’t realize how much of my mind that thing was taking up, because it didn’t happen all at once. But the nice thing is that by just taking the stupid thing off, I get it back all at once.

Fear of Flying. And Running. And Walking.

January 10, 2021 By Lise Quintana in health, personal Tags: fear, habits, running, training, weight loss Leave a comment

Before surgery, when I was at my heaviest, my exercise routine had a predictable pattern. I would go out hiking in the woods every day for weeks, maybe months, and then something would happen that would make me stop. Sometimes it was an injury or illness. Sometimes it was weather conditions that made walking in the woods unsafe (in windy, rainy weather, entire trees fall over). Sometimes it was something else, like the time a guy on the trail threatened to kill me.

However it happened, I would stop hiking. And then, after the illness/injury/weather/fear passed, I would still stay inside. Before my house burned down, this didn’t mean I wasn’t getting any exercise – I still had an elliptical, a stationary bike, and a treadmill at home, and I would just use them. But I don’t get the same kind of workout on a machine indoors. Running on a treadmill is a million times easier than running on the earth, because even the flattest places have those little up- and downhills, uneven pavements or no pavement, and places where I have to stop for a light or negotiate a weird bend in the road. All those things affect my speed, my balance, the amount of effort it takes to keep going at the same speed.

It means that, if I hadn’t been outside in a while, I would think about it and my mind would say “It’s gonna be haaaarrrrd” in that whiny voice my mind adopts when I don’t want to do something. Out loud, I might say “I don’t have time for a walk or a run,” but inside my mind, I know the truth. I’m resisting it because I’m afraid it’s going to be hard.

There was a time when taking a four-mile hike through the woods at a fast pace would mean that my hips and knees would ache for a few days, and heading out the next day on a hike would make the problem worse. There was a time when going too far or too fast, even in my walking shoes with my orthotics in them, would make my feet hurt. Sure, my heart and lungs were up to the job, but my skeleton was struggling. And during that time, I often listened to that little voice inside me that said “You stopped for a good reason. Don’t start again, because it’s going to be difficult and you’re going to hurt yourself.” A hundred pounds ago, that little voice was protecting me from doing myself an injury.

Now that I’m about 100 pounds lighter, I keep forgetting that it’s not hard. It’s just not. I can walk for miles in Converse (the shoes I wear most often around the house) and my feet will be fine. If I’m short on time, I can run my 3-mile circuit, saving 15 minutes off my normal walking pace (I walk with my dog, who slows me up considerably), and my knees and hips will be fine.

It’s hard work to re-program your brain. We’ve all got behaviors we’ve internalized over years – things that protected us at one time, but that aren’t helpful anymore. When I find myself in a situation where those unhelpful instincts kick in (a lot of them have to do with growing up with food insecurity, and so involve eating more than I need), it’s difficult tell myself “This is an old reaction to a situation that doesn’t exist anymore. I can react differently and it’ll be okay.”

Now I need to put that thinking to work in my running routine. It’s not as hard as I think it will be, it won’t take as long as I’m afraid it will, and I’ll be fine afterward. Thanks, little voice. I know you mean well, but you can stop now. You’re no longer needed.

You Can’t Outrun It

January 1, 2021 By Lise Quintana in health, leisure Tags: bariatric surgery, exercise, health, running, weight loss Leave a comment

You probably won’t believe it, but even when I weighed nearly 100 pounds more than I do now, I liked to go running. There’s a perception that all you need to do to lose weight is diet and exercise, but as I’ve said before, it’s just not that simple. Even as I ran almost every day, I was still gaining weight. After a while, the running slowed to walking, although I was still walking miles and miles a day. But after a while, even that became difficult. I had orthotics for my chronic plantar fasciitis, but they did nothing for either my knee pain or my hip bursitis.

Right after surgery, I was counseled to walk. It’s well known that people heal better on their feet than on their backs, and since I like walking, it wasn’t difficult. As with most people right after surgery, the pounds flew off with very little effort. But, as with most people, the honeymoon phase is coming to an end. The pounds aren’t just falling away anymore. That’s fine. My BMI is within the “normal” range, I feel physically good, and I’m satisfied with how I look. Then again, I was always satisfied with how I looked.

Still, I was afraid to get back to running. Hip bursitis and plantar fasciitis are persistent, and while I have an entire regimen of stretches and exercises to relieve the hip bursitis, I was afraid of aggravating it again. I still use the orthotics for my feet.

So last week, I took the plunge. I’d been walking a three-mile loop around my neighborhood, and decided to see what happened if I tried running it.

Running on a treadmill the way I used to is very different than running on the earth, and my loop has a lot of uphills and downhills. The uphills are harder on my thighs, the downhills harder on my knees. I didn’t run the entire three miles, but I did a fair amount of it. My normal routine is to run as long as I can, and then count to ten. Only then can I slow to a walk. I start running again after 100 walking steps.

After three runs this week, I can tell you how I feel. Way, way better than I thought I would. Better attitude, better sleep, better energy. The biggest problem is the fact that it’s getting hard to sit still and work on anything, and with the covid lockdown, that’s difficult. My house is clean, my stuff organized, my yard immaculate. The only thing I have left to do is…go for a run.