Sweatin' buckets

The temperature was near the mid-30s today, and with the humidity it felt like 40. It's only a few degrees cooler than that in my flat, despite the fact that the sun has set. I have a high-powered fan pointing straight at me and I've been having to sit on a towel. The moment I shift out of the fan's range a sweat immediately breaks out all over my body.

Looks like I can finally say it...Summer is officially here. Joy! (please kill me)

I've had some things going on that have distracted me from writing, personal stuff that has me emotional, and exercising that has me busy and tired. Definitely yay! for one and boo! for the other.

The heat and the humidity kicking in has definitely had an effect on me, I've had a couple more miserable river walks, but in the last week I've been really careful about getting a lot of water into me before I set out, and my walks have become enjoyable again.

I've also had to adjust the times when I go, and on a couple days, whether I would even go at all. Yesterday was a repeat of the Sunday before my last post; did the workout first THEN the river walk. But despite the fact that the temp was probably 7 degrees hotter, I didn't long to throw myself into the river as I had last time (whether to cool off or simply drown myself is uncertain). Instead, I felt excellent when I was making my way into my building afterward. Yes I was tired and I had sweated OBSCENE amounts, but I felt really, really good too. The difference this time is that I loaded up on water all day (not that I drank more than usual per se, just drank it earlier in the day instead of evening like I normally do), and maybe more importantly, I made sure to have a meal with protein in between the workout and the walk.

I'm so glad I waited till evening to walk, I left about an hour before sundown and the view on the river was absolutely gorgeous, the sky was purple and orange and the sun was a firely red and the river was such a pretty pale blue, and it was nice to be able to look around at it all instead of having to keep my head down against the usual bright glare of the sun. There was even a little breeze, and it helped me feel cooler and I didn't mind sweating buckets because I didn't feel like I was melting.

But let me tell you, did I ever sweat. Recently when I come home from walks and get undressed, my clothes feel very close to how heavy they are when I take them from the washer while doing laundry. I get a kick out of it, and I also use the heft as a reminder to me to guzzle the water.

I've been a little concered that I've been sweating out more than I'm taking in, in terms of sodium and electtrolytes, etc. I don't drink anything but water, and I eat pretty clean. But I noticed last week that the exact same things I always eat were suddenly tasting really salty to me. The same tuna I always eat tasted so salty that I had to get the can and examine it to make sure nothing was amiss. The next day my cottage cheese tasted so salty I was looking at it in confusion. Normally I dislike salty food, but I've not been bothered by the inexplicable saltiness of certain foods lately, it tastes quite good actually.

It didn't go away wither, it went on for days! This makes me wonder whether my body isn't getting enough sodium/etc to counteract all the excessive sweating I've been doing lately. Most health-conscious people try so hard to cut the salt way down, they don't stop to think that if you keep your intake constant, your body will be affected during times when you sweat more, as when you exercise and/or go through the summer months. I've been doing some reading to see if sensitivity to salt is a symptom of needing more sodium, but have had no luck at all. I keep getting the same cookie-cutter articles talking about how we have too much salt in our diets and salt is baaaaaaaaaad! I've gotten to a point now where I'm a little skeptical though, I think the hoopla around limiting it to 500-2300mg a day or whatever it is, might be unreasonable without taking into account such things as how much you sweat/exercise. I was reading an interesting study that talked about how most studies looking at the adverse affects of salt are not properly factoring for all contributing variables to the health problems they focus on. I'm not saying too much salt is good, I'm just saying I'm starting to have second thoughts on how little is best.

Either way, I've gotten rather obsessive recently about how much of what nutrients I've been getting, in light of the salt-sensitivity and periods of fatigue I was having. I've started journalling my meals very specifically, trying to find out exactly what my intake is. The food scale I bought with a Christmas gift card is prooving invaluable, as I always knew it would be if I ever managed to get one. I've been measuring and weighing everything, even the veggies, because I want to know what I might be lacking or getting too much of, and what I can possibly tweak so that I feel good physically, not to mention lose weight while feeling satisfied.

I will say that I have been tracking my sodium intake for the past week and it seems I do not go over the 2300mg a day of sodium it is widely recommended I should never exceed. Tracking for a week gives me a good picture because my meals have little variation, and if I haven't eaten it somewhere in the week then it's something I don't have very often. I'd been concerned that I should start trying to cut even more sodium out, but after the past couple weeks I'm thinking that I will not worry about that, not over the summer anyway. I'm still trying to decide if perhaps I might need a little more (seriously, you have no idea how much I sweat), I'm going to play it by ear and try to listen closely to my body.

Okay I've rambled on forever, there was more I wanted to say but I'll save it for the next post. Mental Note: you wouldn't need to ramble on forever if you posted more often. Gotcha.