Lessons Learned & Learning 27: 810 Days of Maintenance

Ejourneys

Prior maintenance updates: 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 120 days, 150 days, 180 days, 210 days, 240 days, 270 days, 300 days, 330 days, 360 days, 390 days, 420 days, 450 days, 480 days, 510 days, 540 days, 570 days, 600 days, 630 days, 660 days, 690 days, 720 days, 750 days, 780 days.

The vertical red lines on my chart for average weight indicate the day that I had started taking anastrazole, the drug I'm on to try to prevent cancer recurrence (day 355) and the days of my bout with what was likely E. coli (days 580-581). More on the shifts in my weight trends around those events is in my 630-day update.

Here's how my 27 30-day maintenance periods compare:



My twenty-seventh 30 days looked like this:


Weight: I had reached my goal weight of 150 lbs. on Dec. 17, 2013. According to MFP, that would place my net calories at 1600 for maintenance.

Between days 781 and 810 inclusive my weight averaged 149 and ranged from 148 to 150.

Exercise Calories Burned: I took 0 rest days during maintenance days 781-810. My average exercise calories burned for this period equaled 487/day, the highest average of any 30-day period during maintenance. My highest burn was 654 on Feb. 6, representing 110 minutes on the DeskCycle. Overall, I increased my workout time during this 30-day period, in part because I am still under a heavy lifting restriction due to my chemo port-associated blood clot. If I can't lift, I can at least cycle.

Total and Net Calories Consumed: Total calories for maintenance days 781-810 averaged 2067/day (the highest average of all my maintenance periods) and ranged from 1799 (Feb. 27) to 2464 (Feb. 10). Net calories (total calories minus exercise calories burned) averaged 1580/day (99% of maintenance) and ranged from 1372 to 1921 (same dates as the corresponding total calorie numbers).

On March 4 I celebrated my second cancerversary (the second anniversary of receiving my diagnosis). I await a follow-up ultrasound to see if my blood clot has dissolved. In the meantime I remain on blood thinner and continue to wear a compression sleeve to deal with a last bit of venous swelling.


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I did this up for Valentine's Day. Uses stencils made from images in Beeton's Book of Needlework.


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This is my submission to NASA's #WeTheExplorers campaign. I've taken a few elements from my piece "Observer," including an altered photographic self-portrait overlaid with a stencil made from William Peck's The Constellations and How to Find Them. The background stars come from a stencil created by Stefano Fiore. I have added and tweaked my photographs of a snail shell found in my neighborhood and pumice that I had brought home from Mount St. Helens in 1981.

The pumice here serves as a stand-in for the asteroid Bennu, which will be visited by NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft. Says NASA, "The #WeTheExplorers campaign invites the public to take part in this mission by expressing, through art, how the mission’s spirit of exploration is reflected in their own lives. Submitted works of art will be saved on a chip on the spacecraft."

According to the mission description, "Bennu may contain the molecular precursors to the origin of life and the Earth’s oceans." I thought it appropriate to represent Bennu using something that had come forth from the depths of the Earth via volcanic eruption.

I have also added a photograph of my maternal grandmother's family, taken before they had crossed the Atlantic Ocean to come to the U.S. "What does it mean to be an explorer like OSIRIS-REx?" asks NASA. Says the mission description, "The OSIRIS-REx Mission seeks answers to questions that are central to the human experience: Where did we come from? What is our destiny?" My ancestors had been explorers in their own right. All of us, in our own way, seek a new world in a quest to rediscover our origins.