Things

1) Wanna know something I only just realised last weekend? For a very long time I saw exercise as punishment for being fat. Think about that. Think about what that does to a person when they feel a) something is wrong with them, b) it's their own fault, c) as punishment or to atone for this sin of having this body, they *have to* exercise. I *hate* being told what to do. I *hate* feeling like I *have to* do something someone else says. If I'm gonna do something, it has to be because *I* see value in it. And I see no value in punishing myself.

It took me YEARS to come to the place I'm in now. It is a place where I love my body AS IS and I love my SELF. And I now believe that loving my body means making better choices for it. It took me .... 15 years to WANT to exercise. To WANT to eat differently. Not because other people kept reminding me of how fat/sedentary I had become, but because I didn't feel good and my body didn't feel good. I want to have a strong and healthy heart and lungs and legs and back and arms. I want to be able to help my parents when they get to the age when they need my help, even if that means physically lifting them. Especially if that means physically lifting them.

Also I've wanted to be 'a runner' for years. As a kid I was quite fast and I enjoyed running. When I was 7 I began gaining a lot of weight (thanks Canada) and running ceased being fun, so I stopped doing it. I didn't know why I'd been gaining so much weight and I didn't know how to make it stop. I just knew I was now "full-figured"/ "a big girl"/ "plus sized".

I now know/believe/feel that grains are what caused my rapid weight gain at 7, particularly the way grains are harvested and processed in Canada. Hence my decision to go grain-free for the next 3 months in addition to my previous decision to be wheat free for life.

I've also started the Couch to 5K running program (I bought the app and everything). I'm doing it on the treadmill to force me to keep a steady pace, but I would like to graduate to road running at some point (probably after I get back to Toronto to be honest). I've done 3 workouts so far, and it's challenging for sure, but not so hard that I want to stop or even ease up.

2) I think I'm pretty much done with traditional classroom teaching. I may have blogged about this before, I can't remember. I've definitely thought it and said it before. As an introvert, I give energy in social situations and performances. As a performer that's always been fine, because I've been lucky enough to always get the energy back by way of audience attention and applause. If you think about it, the audience chooses to watch the performance and WANTS a good show, so they will it to be good. No one wants to have wasted their time and/or money. So even though I give a lot of energy when I sing or act, it's always returned to me pretty much right away.

Teaching in public school is not like that. I recently read The Alchemist (a book I feel deserves several revisits) and I think I know why. Here in Korea, my students are required to attend my classes. They're teenagers, but might as well be children for the amount of freedom they have to choose. Many of them are so far away from their own Personal Legends (Alchemist reference) that they're exhausted both physically and emotionally. As soon as they walk into my classroom, I feel that. So I try to compensate for their lack of energy by giving even more. But it isn't returned. I have maybe 2 or 3 classes (of 16) who come in with positive energy, even when they're physically drained, and they give me more energy than I give them, and it makes a big difference to me.

I don't feel like my job is seen as valuable for the most part (by the students or the school), which doesn't motivate me to soldier through the dead energy, and I was shocked to find I'm at a place where I don't want to go to work any more and am keeping my sights on free periods, long weekends, and whatever other time off I get (thankfully, I get a good amount).

3) I'd lost my motivation to code for the last couple months and didn't know why. I realised recently that I am only interested right now in front end development, rather than back end as well. I had been trying to convince myself that I needed to be a full stack web developer in order to be a 'real' programmer but the prospect of doing that bored me and I lost my drive and the fun that I was having when I first started (with HTML and CSS). I decided even if I'm not a real programmer, I can make a living doing front-end web development and web design and enjoy it. Also, a chat with my friend Tina (thanks girl!) assured me that Javascript (which is a part of front end developing) *IS* real programming. So there. Sounds cliché, but I have a renewed interest and sense of purpose now and I'm coding every day again without having to force myself. If you follow me on instagram (which you should: @AngeliqueJazz) you'll see that I'm learning jQuery currently and getting disproportionately excited about my mini achievements. I think I'm also happy that I'm excited again, which compounds the excitement.

4) I'd made a post about how I'm in countdown mode now, and that's still true, but with the coding, the running, and the nutrition experiments, I'm keeping myself meaningfully busy and it's helping me focus on something other than being here and being in countdown mode. Emotionally I'm in a good place these days, but I know for me it goes in cycles, so I'm building the habits now so that when my emotions take a dip I will hopefully have enough of a habit built up to push through it.

That's all. Bye!

4 Things

Metal Head and Grain Belly

I had tinnitus for MONTHS. It started after I had a middle ear infection around November 2015, so I thought it was connected. I saw 3 ENT specialists and they all said the same thing. "Nothing is wrong with your ear, so it's no big deal. It will go away on its own. The more you pay attention to it, the more you'll notice it." I was not satisfied with this answer so I did some Googling. None of the ENTs mentioned that having a high blood pressure could be a factor, and I found out that my blood pressure was (in January 2016) at the bottom of the high range.

That was also the time I decided to stop eating wheat altogether. I mentioned this in a previous post. It's now June and, save a couple accidents, I have been wheat free for 5 months now. Since then I have noticed that I don't get as bloated, the swelling in my ankles mostly went down, and my acne went away. Like the every day bumps that would just... appear for no discernible reason and cause me anguish because I am was a grown woman with acne! I have also, in the past month or so, been increasing my water intake, which I'm SURE has helped as well. As of today my tinnitus is MOSTLY GONE!!

BUT, I thought that was all I needed to do. Drop the wheat; drop the weight and the bloating and the discomfort. Nope. A bakery opened up in my neighbourhood that only uses rice flour in their products. I was SOOOO HAPPY that I kinda went nuts. Over the course of a week or two I tried out the different things they had: loaves, bagels, scones, etc. My ankles started to swell again. My stomach started to bloat again. I didn't have cravings the way wheat gave me cravings, though, so that was interesting (and a relief). I had noticed bloating when I ate regular white rice as well, but thought it was just making the wheat issue worse. (Trying to rationalize it so I could keep eating rice haha).

Anyway, I did some Youtube research and came to the conclusion I probably need to cut out all grains *cries*. I thought corn was safe because I haven't noticed as much bloating even as the rice, which caused less bloating than wheat. But, as it turns out, it's not just about the bloating (which I knew, but didn't pay much attention to).

So that's the next goal. Grain free. My mum follows a ketosis diet, which I tried for like a week, so I have seen how to eat meals without grains. And now I have a more compelling reason to do it for myself. I'm not saying I'm going keto, but I will go grain free, because I need to for my body. I've seen myself get fatter and fatter over the years without doing very much that's different from other people who are skinny. I know that physical activity is part of it, but having tried various workout programs that only worked short term, I know my nutrition is the key right now.

That's all.

Okay I love you buh-bye! (Looney Tunes anyone?)

Oh my god oats are grains too, aren't they? *sigh* man....