About Me

Hi, I'm Astrophe. That rhymes with catastrophe. Not that my life is catastrophic by any means. It's got it's wackier moments, but all in all, it's a nice life.

This is a small mirror site of some of the first on-line journal I have ever kept. Besides the many evolutions of my website's look and feel or what copies are floating around out there, my writing has also evolved to embrace and include more than just what I ate, if and how I exercised.

I do have a real life, I don't live for my gym membership!

The focus, if any, still revolves around my journey and what I've affectionately dubbed my "body project." I have my off-line journals for other things, but this one gets pretty personal too. Just themed around me and my thoughts, body image and women and the junk I think about during my body project. It's not going to always be sweet and sugary. Sometimes it will be mean, cranky, and whiny. Journals are for dumping. So I dump!

I do it for my own jollies, not anyone else's.

I got started with this "wannabe fitter" thing because even though my self-esteem and body image were stable and doing peachy, my actual body was not. After a long bout of illness and depression I'd gained a lot of weight. So much that my joints started to hurt from carrying excess weight, and my fingers would go numb from bad circulation. I'd huff up the stairs of my own house. This was not groovy at all.

I also didn't feel like "dieting" because I never see anything permanent coming out of that "diet mentality" in my friends or relatives. The yo-yoing and the bingeing and the deprivation -- that stuff. I'd never dieted before in my life, and I wasn't about to start now when all around me I had friends dieting and suffering eating disorders and screwed up self-esteems. This all looked like needless suffering to me and I was so scared of taking that route I put off doing anything about my own weight for a while. Instead I read and tried to think of the things I really wanted to do.

• I wanted to lose enough weight to lose the joint pains and back aches. I was somewhere at 220-230 lbs, and it was hurting!
• I'm eco-minded, so I knew I wanted to taper down to eating vegan for reasons other than weight control.
• I wanted to be stronger and fitter, because I hate the idea of being viewed as a soft target. Being fit is not a guarantee that you won't be a victim of a crime, but in a crowd, it's the soft targets that get victimized first because they look "easier." I don't need to look "easy!" (My dad was a security guard, it's normal for me to be thinking things like this, honest.)

I sought out CD20's and Vegsource boards for extra support and I started keeping an on-line journal, Pink Pig Scribbles, in June 1998 to help me field the emotional roller coaster. Parts of the journal is mirrored here at HealthyPlace starting with January 2000. For older archives and other Astrophe weirdness you'll have to go back to the original Pink Pig Scribbles.

After a year and a half, I've hit everything I set out to do, now I am trying to redefine my goals and figure out the next steps. I could stand to lose a bit more, I could stand to build more muscle. But the emphasis has switched from "lose weight" to "gain fit."

Exercise? I've taken up a new hobby -- biking. So besides gym oriented things I do that. I'm not super great at it yet. I'll probably be talking about that at length!

Foodwise? Still vegan. At the moment I am trying to find a local dietitian that I like who specializes in vegetarian/vegan nutrition. I've made it this far on my own, but I feel like I need to check in with a professional to make sure I am still on a sensible track. Going vegan doesn't automatically make you healthy. You do have to pay attention and make sure you are getting everything you need.

I will probably talk a lot about veg*nism and environment and granola chickie things like that once in a while too.

There's a baby somewhere in the not too distant future, so I figure I better get fit for that now as well. Oh, along with the MaybeBaby, there's that guy Paul who lives here with me. He pops into my writing quite a bit. Kinda dig him.

So the current goals if written out would be something like this:

• Fall into my healthy range for my height. At 5'8" tall, that's between 130-165 lbs. I don't care where, just in there somewhere.
• Get stronger, more flexible, see muscle definition so I can become a better biker. I'd like to do bike challenges and maybe even race one day!
• Set the right nutritional and physical backdrop for the MaybeBaby. If we decide to get pregnant, I'd like to stack as many odds on my side for a smooth pregnancy.

While I appreciate comments and constructive criticism, in the end I like just dancing to the beat of my own drum. If you like how I dance, you'll enjoy the site. If not, oh well. I'll still keep dancing.

Beat, beat, beat.

~Astrophe

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