
I have not had a great week. My anxiety is still sky high, even though I felt like cutting out the caffeine helped. I just don't understand it! There is absolutely no reason for the anxiety, but it's nearly constant for me now.
My eating was not so great this week, either, and I gained 1.6 pounds from last week. I'm still down three pounds from where I started a few weeks ago, but I'm certainly not going to make any more progress if I keep eating how I did this past week.

I guess I have been using the food to help with the anxiety, but it clearly doesn't--at all. I really need to go see my psychiatrist. I've been resisting changing anything with my meds because everything was working out SO WELL until a few months ago. I felt the best I had mentally in a long time--very stable.
The only thing that's really changed is that I stopped drinking. I had hoped that quitting drinking would make me feel BETTER, not worse. However, I've discovered from a couple of people who quit drinking that the first few months to a year can feel worse before it starts to get better. That's a long time to wait!
My goal for this sobriety journey was to go for a full year without drinking; so, hopefully, I'll start to feel the benefits of it before the year is up! Haha. I was hoping that I'd feel really great at the end of the year and it'll make me want to quit alcohol for good. I'm not saying that drinking will make things better--that's obviously not true--but I just wish that I felt the benefits of quitting already.
I'm going to keep this post relatively short, because even writing a blog post makes me anxious.
On a positive note, on Monday I started the Walking for Weight Loss Training Plan that I wrote. There are three "easy" walks per week and two walks with hard intervals. I have to say, the immediate benefit of this plan was that I didn't dread doing the walks like I did running. I like the thought of my easy walks being days where I don't have to worry about changing into workout clothes, showering right afterward, and working it into my day so I'd have extra time to do those things.
The first day was a 45 minute easy walk, and I did put on my heart rate monitor just to see what my heart rate looked like from walking versus running. I actually did this one on the treadmill, and I was able to text and look at Instagram and stuff like that while I was walking. The easy walks are meant to be truly easy, and it was.
I set the speed at (I think) 2.8 mph, which felt just right. My average heart rate was 115 bpm. My only goal was to keep it under 143 bpm, so I obviously did that. When I saw that my heart rate was so much lower than my aerobic target, I read up some more on MAF training and it said that the ideal range would be to train at that target or up to 10 bpm lower (so my ideal range would be 133-143 bpm).
On tomorrow's walk (30 minutes easy) I'll aim for that heart rate range and see how it feels (also, what speed is required to get it to that range). What feels "easy" as far as my exertion level probably won't get my heart rate into that zone; so, I'm going to do some more reading about what is ideal for walking rather than running.
On the speed work days (hard walking intervals), I did get my heart rate higher--but still nowhere near what I did when I was running. The first interval walk isn't accurate as far as my heart rate goes, because I wore a regular bra instead of a sports bra, and it somehow affected my heart rate strap. So, I can only base the numbers on the interval walk I did yesterday.
Yesterday's workout was: 10 minutes easy; then 6 x (2 min fast, 1 min easy); then 10 minutes easy for a cool down. (You'll see below that I only did 7 minutes for a cool down--for some reason, I was thinking I had to stop at 35:00 and not 38:00! My mistake.)
For each of the 2-min fast segments, my heart rate peaked at 152, 154, 157, 155, 156, and 155. On my warm-up and cool down, my heart rate was an average of 114 and 119 respectively. I was walking as fast as I possibly could during the 2-min segments--my pace was 12:53, 13:27, 13:10, 13:15, 13:26, and 13:36. (I had no idea I was capable of walking that fast.)
If I want to get my heart rate higher on the intervals, I'll probably need to use the treadmill and add incline. However, being in the 150's is still higher than my target of 143, so maybe that will be beneficial regardless. Like I said, I'll read some more about it.


Also, because the plan is only in the first week, the intervals are rather short. I'm sure that when I'm doing 4-5 minute intervals at a fast pace, my heart rate will get much higher at its peak.
This whole thing is so interesting to me because it's something I've not tried before. The 80/20 method of running worked SO WELL for training and for weight loss, and I am hoping that it works well for walking, too. But like I said, I'm basically testing this plan on myself right now, so I can't say exactly what is going to happen.
Also, I have to consider that I ate crappy this week, and the walking isn't going to make up for that. I'd really like to focus on eating well this week along with the walking. I hope that might help with the anxiety, too! Meanwhile, I'll see my psychiatrist and see what he thinks about making any changes with my meds.