Week 22: Gratitude, Exercise, High Blood Pressure, and Parenting Woes
This Week’s Accountability Report
Exercise:
Six out of seven days: Last week, I mentioned that I wanted to learn more about HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and start making a new workout routine for myself. While I haven’t gotten around to making a new routine for myself yet, I did do a little research into HIIT and I did find some interesting exercises that I tried out this week. Not having a trainer to talk with one on one means that I have to make some guesses about what is effective and what isn’t, and I’m finding myself really wondering just how hard I need to push myself and just how long and how often I need to rest when trying to do an effective HIIT workout.
The routine that I have settled into over the past five and half months has qualities of HIIT workouts: varied strength training exercises that are cardio based and are performed at a level of intensity that requires one to take short breaks either in between each exercise or after a series of exercises. What I have found is that I can align a series of exercises in such a way that I can continue exercising intensely without a taking a real break (one in which I am not moving at all) and am instead recovering while doing an exercise that requires more balance and control, which, for me, tends to mean a slower pace. I don’t know if not taking a break is good or not, but it is satisfying to me because I feel like doing so allows me to take full advantage of the ten or twelve minutes that I am exercising.
This week, I plan to delve a little further into the recommended HIIT workout sequences that I found and see how my body responds to them. Perhaps, by trial and error, I will be able to find the answer to my question above. Maybe I ought to be pushing myself harder than I am and ought to be aligning the exercise sequences differently. Maybe I should just keep doing what I’m doing.
A Success: This week I ran at a good pace for thirty-five minutes without taking a break. So far, this year, that is the longest I have been able to do so. Slowly, over the next six months, I would like to see my endurance continue to grow and, eventually, I hope to be able to run for more than an hour without needing rest.
Weight:
78.2 kg: Last week, I said that I thought I was finally going to break the 78 kg wall that I had seemed to settle at. This week I did. My weight began at 78.2 kg last Thursday, then dropped down to 77.4 kg for three days before rising back up to 78.2 kg today.
When I look back over last six months, I can see that this upward and downward fluctuation is very normal. However, over the long term, the movement in my weight has consistently been downward. On January 4, my weight was 82 kg. On February 3, it was 81.5 kg. On March 3, it was 80.2 kg. On April 4, it was 80.5 kg. On May 7, it was 79 kg. And on June 4, it was 77.4 kg. Today it is back up to 78.2 kg, but if the trend that has been set over the past six months has anything to tell me, it is that I will probably be entering the 76 kg range in a month or two.
A Concern: For the past three or four years, my blood pressure has slowly been rising. Often, it ranges between 120/68 and 143/72, or thereabouts. When the systolic pressure is under 130, I feel relieved. When it is over 130, I feel worried. The fact that it still falls under 130 has calmed my fears over the past two years. Last week, though, when I checked my blood pressure, it was 156/73. This is a new high for me.
I know; there are a lot of factors that can elevate one’s blood pressure at any given time on any given day. On the day that I checked my blood pressure last week, I was feeling tired and stressed out. I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep the night before, and had just eaten lunch and drunk a cup of coffee not long before I took this blood pressure reading. All of these could be reasons for why my blood pressure was so high. What concerned me more than the initial reading was that one hour later, I took my blood pressure again and it was still high: 144/68.
With all of the exercise that I have been doing this year, and with the slight amount of weight loss that I have experienced, I really hoped that my blood pressure would fall below a systolic reading of 130. Since it hasn’t, and since it has now become higher than ever before (at least on the day that I most recently measured my blood pressure), I am wondering if I need to be exercising slightly differently, or if I need to change my eating habits and really start paying attention to my sodium intake, etc.
I guess the best thing to do is to start monitoring my blood pressure a little more regularly. I know that buying a home blood pressure monitor is recommended for people in my situation, but I don’t know if I’m at that point yet. I guess it is something that I will have to start giving more consideration to.
Looking Forward/Looking Back:
There have been a lot of things that have been bothering me lately, namely, the way that my children fight and constantly antagonize each other, and also their growing unwillingness (which is becoming mixed with an inability) to communicate with me in English. I know that I am not responding to them in a way that is effective, but I don’t know what to do about it. More and more, I am finding myself feeling angry and responding to their aggressions, shouting, etc. from a place of anger myself. I feel like I am heading into the territory of becoming the parent that I didn’t want to be. So, I want to focus on changing this. I want to find more productive ways to deal with my children’s emotional and behavioral out lashings. I also want to find more effective ways of encouraging them to communicate in English.
Additionally, I want to start spending five minutes or more practicing gratitude everyday, either before I fall asleep or as soon as I wake up. It feels strange to say this, but I really feel like I have either lost the ability to feel gratitude lately, or I never really had the ability feel it to begin with.
Earlier this week, I tried to open myself up and feel grateful for the life that I have and all of the people and things that I have in it. Before falling asleep, I lay in bed and just tried to be thankful. I focused on my breathing and thought of my family, of our house, of our interactions, of my job and my students, of the season we are currently in, and so many more things. I tried to just accept them all openly, lovingly, and thankfully. But I couldn’t tell if it was working. I didn’t know if I was feeling gratitude or not. Maybe that is where gratitude begins, in an effort, and in a growing awareness. I know that with exercise, first I made a decision to exercise. Then, I implemented actions that helped me to become more aware of how and when I was being active on a daily basis. If I can take similar steps toward growing my awareness of how and when I am feeling gratitude and practicing gratitude, I think that I can become more in touch with this feeling and better able to implement it in my life.
Similar to what I have done with exercise, starting this week, I plan to begin trying to practice gratitude on a daily basis and recording my efforts in my journal alongside of my weight and the exercises that I have done. That way I will be able to hold myself accountable for my efforts, or lack thereof.
Sorry for the late response @boxcarblue—I am finally recovering from my own parental woes last week, so I am trying to catch up. At to your kids problem, Hmm.... I don't really have a solution, but I will talk about my own situation and maybe that will give you some ideas. My wife and I refuse to use Japanese at home. Home is English only. We don't yell at the kids for using Japanese, but we only respond in English and depending on their emotional state we may refuse to listen unless they do use English too. We figure they get plenty of Japanese outside the house, so inside is their English bubble to ensure they retain fluency in it. As a result, we haven't had any real problems along those lines yet. Yet ;)
But yeah, my kids fight constantly with each other, as well. I think that is just a kid thing. My wife worries about it and yells at them, but I let them fight within reason, only stopping them if it escalates to a dangerous level. I do often sit down with my oldest and not really lecture him, but remind him that it's not nice to fight with people, that his brother loves him very much, that he doesn't like when other kids pick on him so he shouldn't do the same, etc. I also always ask them (not make them) to hug and kiss after they fight, and this seems to be positive for both.
I try never to respond in anger myself and I try not to yell, because I know they will learn from that and will copy that. Believe me, it is challenging! But I try to always stay calm and respond calming to them.
Anyway, no advice there, just what I do. Take from it what you will, or discount it as foolish. Either way :)
5 minutes of gratitude every day is a wonderful exercise. I have a question in my bullet journal that I answer everyday. It says "What am I thankful for today?" and I'm not allowed to repeat anything I have answered from the past few weeks or so.
Thanks for the detailed response. Just hearing other people's stories is often very helpful.
Unfortunately, my wife really can’t speak English, so the language use in our house is predominantly Japanese. I suppose she would learn if she tried, but it would take quite a bit of work to change our communication habits at this point. I never speak Japanese to my children and that worked with my son. But when my daughter came along, she didn’t get as much one-on-one English exposure as my son did and hasn’t begun actively using the language yet, which means that there’s this self-feeding cycle that is leaning towards Japanese in our house.
My son always spoke English with me up until a year ago, when we moved to a new house. Now the time we used to spend taking walks together, he often spends playing with kids on the street or talking with his sister, which is almost an extension of their time together at hoikuen so the communication is mostly Japanese.
I’m taking them Stateside this summer for a month and am hoping that will rebalance the scales a little, but I’m afraid I’ve got a big uphill battle on my hands. I’m not sure if I should get upset about it or not. When I let it, though, it really gets under my skin, especially when I know my son has the ability to use English and won’t. There are times when he reaches the limits of his abilities and I can understand that, but when he uses Japanese to say something to me that he’s been saying in English since he was two, it really bums me out. And then saying, How do you say that in English fifty times a day, or purposefully misunderstanding him until he uses English, well, that gets exhausting.
Your tip on gratitude is a nice one. I’ll try adding that to my planner.
Thanks again!
Gratitude...that's a tough one. I think it's easier to say that you're grateful than to genuinely feel it but, as you say, maybe that's the first step, an awareness and a desire. I know that for me, I often become more keenly aware of how thankful I truly am for what I have when I am around others who have so much less - family, health, wealth. The best way to do that would be to volunteer at a soup kitchen or similar setting.
For blood pressure, caffeine, nicotine, stress and anxiety, recent exercise, alcohol withdrawal and many other factors can elevate a given reading without causing hypertension. The anxiety you feel over an elevated reading can cause the reading a few minutes later to be even higher. Lifestyle changes you could try would be: <2,400 mg sodium/day, alcohol in moderation (14 "drinks" weekly for a male and no more than 4 on any one occasion), aerobic exercise 150 minutes weekly, weight loss, and the DASH diet (low fat dairy, lots of fruits and vegetables, and unsalted nuts).
Actually, I volunteered at a soup kitchen about a month ago and it felt really great to do. It gave me the desire to feel like I did that night more often. I have to put more of an effort into searching things like that out.
As for the blood pressure. I always get nervous in the middle of those readings. I don’t know what I can do about it. I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, rarely drink alcohol, and have been getting a fair amount of exercise for the past six months. I’m working on losing a little more weight. The only other things I can think of that might contribute to the problem, if it really is one, is caffeine and salt. Giving up caffeine will be hard for me, and it might be hard for me to get a feel for my actual sodium consumption. If I could cut down on my portion size a little more, that might help. It’s a situation that I plan to monitor for the next couple of months.
You don’t need to give up caffeine, just don’t check your blood pressure for a while after consuming. Caffeine will raise your blood pressure, as will exercise, but neither cause hypertension.
That leaves me the time after I get up or the time before I go to bed to get a good reading then. I usually drink three cups of coffee a day. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try to cut that back a little.
The last I heard about coffee and health was that one cup a day was good, two cups better, and three optimal. While caffeine will temporarily elevate your blood pressure, it will not cause "high blood pressure" if you catch the distinction.
I see. I still feel like for people with high blood pressure, giving up caffeine is often recommended. I’m going to figure out where I can have a few more readings done throughout the week and see if I can find an average blood pressure to get a feel for where mine is actually at.
I love your planner if I haven't said so, what brand is it?
I give thanks for everything in my life every time my car starts. For several years my car was powered by prayer and even after I replaced the starter I still give thanks each time.
Here is a workout I really like that I do a lot, it really helps with my neck and shoulder pain:
I find myself yelling at my son from time to time as well and having trouble getting him to speak to me in English at times as well, and he only speaks English! When I notice it happening I try to deescalate but it's hard to be that self aware all the time.
Thanks for sharing the weekly accountability report sir
I would mention the BP to your doc. I have been on the pills for a while.
I think just opening your mind to allow the thoughts of gratitude to enter is a good start.
I don’t have a primary care physician, so I’m not exactly sure who I should tell about it. I have an annual physical scheduled for August and am planning to bring it up with the doctor I’m assigned. I may have to go to a heart clinic and seek advice there. In Japan all the medicines are separated into various clinics. It’s kind of like going to the eye doctor, dentist, or dermatologist. You need to find a doctor for each area, or you can go to a hospital and see the doctors in each department.
As for the gratitude, even when I try to open my mind to thoughts of gratitude I feel kind of blocked. I’ve had what I feel like is some success, but it isn’t as simple as I thought it would be. I’m finding it really hard to get beyond the word itself.
Ah ok I didnt know how it worked there. I would bring it up at the annual physical for sure. I can say the pills are generic and inexpensive.
I know for me I feel a sense of gratitude often when walking in nature. Just to see a simple sight sometimes makes me feel thankful.
I feel like I’m making progress in the area of feeling thankful as I’m afforded random sights. Nature is helpful for me as well. I don’t get out into it enough these days, though, which is unfortunate because I’ve always felt great releases when I’m in the mountains. For me, hiking really gets me to a state where I let go of my stress and can appreciate things.
Here I am, popped back in to check on you... :)
Hmmm, higher blood pressure? And I read about your concern and feelings about your children; I don't know how much but could this also be part of the reason for the increased bp? Sodium intake as you mentioned, also definitely adds to it - try to reduce, it will help, I think.
Ahhhh, Gratitude ~ I find every time I feel I need to be grateful, I just need to check on some of those with more troubles in their lives than me, that instantly makes me grateful - I may not have as much as I want, but definitely sufficient and often more than most! Does that help? ;)
Cheers and Have a good week ahead!! :)
Thanks for stopping in. Yeah, I’m sure that family stress could be contributing to my blood pressure levels. It could have just been an off reading from that day too. I’m not sure.
The kids are going through some growing pains right now. They aren’t easy to deal with when they’re together, which is most of the time.
Thanks for your tip on gratitude! Others have mentioned doing volunteer work to put myself in contact with people who are less fortunate than I. I’ll see if I can find some new volunteer work in my area and give it a shot.
Lol... I remember that phase my niece and nephew went through... I used to make them sit at opposite sides of the car with my sis in the middle... Anyone misbehaving will be threatened with sitting outside... yes, I was cruel! ;) And I would tell them I have eyes behind my head... to watch them, of course! :D