better not better?

[serafaery]

It's so strange, I woke up feeling just as horrible as when I went to sleep, but today I was able to get up and clean and make breakfast and do exercises like normal, even though my thoughts are a nightmare. My body feels better today, despite the trash I fed it all day yesterday. (i threw away the chocolate spread and the chocolate covered pretzels this morning.) and my eye is healing well enough that even josh commented on it this morning that it looks better, and he never notices that stuff.

it's a weird feeling to be functional while depressive thoughts are still in control. just going through the motions but thank goodness for healthy habits. getting me through.

coffee is good.

started part 3 of the lifespan book. which allegedly talks more about what we can do right now to combat aging. he said most people over 45 fail the sit-stand-test. i tried it this morning and failed. it is really sad for me. BUT. I think a huge reason for this is my hip dysplasia. if my hips allowed me to sit cross-legged like a normal person, i think i could pass the test easily, but they don't. however, the fact that i have hip dysplasia, despite the fact that it is congenital and happened before i was born, might have an effect on my lifespan. my surgeon told me that being under for my procedure for 7.5 hours would reduce my lifespan by 2-3 years, for example.

I did do 20 pushups this morning, which he also said is a good sign of slower aging in people over 45. so there's that.

Comments

[arethinn]

he said most people over 45 fail the sit-stand-test.

Is this "sit in a chair with arms folded and then stand and sit 5 times without support"?

20 pushups! Wow. I had just about gotten to 5 last spring when I had a shoulder problem (that still isn't fully resolved) and backslid a whole lot over the course of months and am not yet back up to consistently being able to do 3. But then, I had kind of plateaued at 5 and didn't seem to be able to push it any further than that, either. I figured I needed some other kind of focused training to build up the muscles, rather than trying to do it through the pushups alone, but I would have wanted instruction from a person rather than trying to go that alone and possibly injure myself.

[serafaery]

Actually I was not calling it the right name, it's called the "sit rise test" and it is simply sitting on the floor in a cross-legged position, and seeing if you can get up in one motion by quickly leaning forward. Most young people can. Most middle aged people need a hand to push off of. Most elderly people need to get to one knee.

(After about 50 tries the other night, I finally managed to do it, but I think the 50 tries would give me what David Sinclair called an "imperfect" score lol.)

I built up pushups in circus. When I started circus training (in maybe 2011) I could do maybe 3 pushups tops, and would complete our 10 for each class warm up on my knees. I eventually built up to 10 pushups by doing knee pushups this way. But to get to 20 I just kept adding pushups one or two at a time, so for a while I did 12, then 15, etc. I was at 20 consistently last summer during first lockdown since there really wasn't much else to do. 2nd lockdown has been a lot harder on me, with the death of my mom on top of everything. There are some days I can't do more than 10, but I can still do 20 with decent form on good days :)

[arcanetrivia]

Hm. Maybe I'm not picturing the right motion, but all my ways of getting up from that position are either one knee or the other (depending on which way I had folded my legs in the first place) or, more awkwardly, both (with my feet pointed behind me in that case). I don't think it's mobility exactly - nothing hurts or feels restricted - I'm just not sure how you would balance otherwise? If I put one leg more tightly under me I can do it without either knee actually touching the floor but it feels ungraceful. And now my knees are not too happy with my trying this repeatedly on the insufficiently padded hardwood floor ;) (I'm 42 years old.)

Argh, that's basically what I was doing with the pushups. "Just one more." I do fill out with knee pushups but they don't seem to actually build capacity (endurance, a little, maybe). Oh well.

[arethinn]

Whoops, that was me (fandom account). Man I miss the ljlogin extension.