Ah, it almost felt like spring today! Such a lovely day, I feel energized!
I am also about halfway through the book Life of Pi which is fascinating, I am having a hard time putting it down. It's very well written, and so descriptive, that it gives such a nice picture of this amazing world we live in; despite the horrors that we have to endure life can be so beautiful.
I've been trying to get in a little of MacAuliffe's The Sikh Religion before bed, but my dog doesn't seem to want me to read. She keeps jumping on me and wanting me to play with her instead. So, I think it is just going to have to wait until I finish plowing through Life of Pi and then I'll just have to take it with me and read it on the train like I've been doing with Pi.
I thought this was an interesting and really beautiful project.It's so nice to see these pictures of men and women who survived breast cancer, and have "imperfect" looking chests now being so happy because they survived something so horrible. I think we should take a few moments to reflect on how lucky we are the next time we feel about complaining about chest surgery scars.
Well, I went to Gurdwara today. It wasn't snowing this morning, so I fugured it was time to go. I was the first person there, I guess everyone shows up fashionably late, so it was a little bit awkward at first. It also turns out I sat on the men's side, but no one seemed to care. It was nice, and there was no pictures of Yogi Bhajan anywhere. It started snowing towards the end of the service, and I got a bit nervous thinking it was going to make for an awful drive back. I was going to leave early, but stayed for the end, then I ended up eating at langar since they told me it would only take about 10 minutes (and I was pretty hungry). After I ate and talked to some of the people there, I left; the roads were a little scary at first, but then suddenly the snow stopped and whatever was on the street quickly melted so I had a nice drive home after all.
I ordered Harhans Singh Doabia's Sacred Nitnem a few days ago on Amazon, and it arrived today. I am pretty excited to get going on this whole Sikh thing (though I've been trying for the past two weeks to go to Gurdwara, but it keeps snowing which prevents me from leaving the house). I ordered this version, because it has the prayers in the original script, then it has the Roman pronunciations underneath, and then English translation on the facing page.
I listened to the Japji Sahib being recited on YouTube while following along in the book today. It's so long, I can't believe people recite it every morning.
I also bought Volume I of Max Arthur MacAuliffe's The Sikh Religion which was printed originally in 1909. MacAuliffe lived in British India and was the first person to really translate all the Sikh works into English, he converted to Sikhism, and was considered an expert on the religion. The volume so far seems really interesting, because he's discussing the British Punjab as it was back in the late 1800s. I think the bulk of the book is just translations and perhaps some commentary on some Sikh texts. I really dislike the font used to print the book in though, I think it is Calibri, which I really despise for some reason.
I am still trying to decide if I want to present as male or not at Gurdwara. I don't pass, so I am thinking of going female. There's a gurdwara run by 3HO (ugh... don't get me started on Yogi Bhajan, from what I've learned about him, I am not a big fan) that I might go to as female, and then if I decide to transition, I'll start going to the non-3HO gurdwaras once I start appearing more male.
I've been working on some more advanced yoga poses than I get in my yoga videos. Currently, I am working on Bird of Paradise and on Sunday I think I made a good breakthrough. I can now raise the leg that's being held up. I would like to be able to hold it straighter and eventually up even higher.
Once I get that down, at least to a more satisfying level, I am going to move onto the Flying Pigeon Pose.
While doing the yoga section of ChaLean Extreme today, I realized how unflexible the man in the video is compared to the women. I've also seen this in some other exercise videos as well. While men can be more flexible than women (Rodney Yee sure is more flexible that I can hope to be), it seems like in general, women have greater flexibility. I read this article here which gives a brief explanation on some of the physical differences between men and women. Men have some differences in their joints which can make them less flexible than women, and women also have differences in our pelvis which makes it easier for us to tone our lower bodies without getting injuries as easily.
I think sometimes FTMs feel bad about our physical abilities because we're not as naturally strong in our upper bodies as bio-men are. While I would like to be able to lift more and show off my arms to everyone, I think we should also recognize these other benefits we have from being bio-female that bio-men do not have. We just have to work a little extra hard at our upper bodies, but our bio-male friends need to work a little extra hard on their flexibility training and lower body work. Our lower bodies and flexibility is just as important health wise, so we shouldn't forget that we have this advantage.
And if you guys want some inspiration, check out what a bio-female can do with her upper body, and check out her workout schedule and logs she provides.
First of all, I think a healthy and interesting way of dealing with my gender identity is to go through all the reasons why I think I fit more into the male side of the spectrum. I think doing a series on these reasons could be beneficial to me, or anyone else who is questioning their identity who does not fit into the stereotypical trans* narrative of "I've always known I was a boy (or girl)". I don't know how often I'll be posting in this series, I'll just write whenever I feel like addressing a certain issue or whenever I remember something that I think would be of interest.
The other day in my taxation class our professor started talking about how she thinks people born and bred in Orlando are weird. She met someone from Orlando, and the first thing that person said was "Hi, I am Jill. What's your favorite Disney character?" A little later, a girl had asked a question about the material, and as my professor finished giving the answer, she asked the girl "so, what's your favorite Disney character?" jokingly; the girl answered Bell from The Beauty & The Beast.
That got me thinking about Disney movies. Of course while Disney isn't the determining factor in gender, I realized then that I didn't really have a favorite character... I know Bell was my older sister's favorite character, and that made me remember a conversation we had as a child. She told me her favorite scene in that movie was the scene where Bell and the Beast were dancing and being all romantic, and I replied that my favorite scene was the fight scene between Beast and that guy who wanted Bell. I distinctly remember her saying that I always like the fight scenes.
I think the closest to a favorite character I would have would be some of the villains. I think I've always been a bit attracted to the evil characters. I remember thinking that the evil witch Maleficent in the Sleeping Beauty was a complete babe, and the Queen in Snow White was more beautiful than Snow White herself.
While a part of me did enjoy dressing up in these beautiful frilly dresses that my grandmother sewed for me, I never felt like I wanted to be a princess like Bell. Sometimes I thought that would be a good idea, maybe because I'd get to live in a castle and have people fight over me all day, or maybe because my name means princess so therefore I should want to be a princess. But, I really always wanted to be the prince. I love girls who are like princesses, I want to be the knight who goes and rescues them after I valiantly fight off the forces of evil. I am sure that is partially what attracted me to a career in law enforcement -- I just want to save the women.
I think the closest to any female Disney character I ever felt was Pocahontas. She was brave, strong, independent, and she is the one who rescued John Smith in the end. She wasn't like the other girls in Disney movies, and that is something that I could relate with.
Not identifying with Disney characters like many of the girls I know isn't the full reason why I am male, but I think it is an interesting way of seeing how I thought of myself as a child. At that age, I didn't have the vocabulary or life experience to know what trans is. I also did not understand the difference between sex and gender. Knowing who I wanted to be like though gives me a glimpse into my younger self's mind, and shows me that I didn't feel like my sister and that I felt more like the men who I saw in these movies.
Edit: I also remember liking the animal movies more than the human movies. I think I identified with Simba from The Lion King, but like the other movies, my favorite scene was the fight scenes.
One of my New Year's Resolutions was to see a gender therapist. While I've look some up in the area, I haven't called any to see if they take my insurance or whatnot. While it is only midway through February, I should have called someone by now; it will be March sooner than I realize it, then July, then September, then 2014.
I think I've been procrastinating, because I feel like if I take this step in my transition that there's no way I'll be able to, in my mind, ever go back to just "being a girl". In some ways, I feel like Neo here in the Matrix.
I want to take the blue pill, just live a normal life as a woman. But, I know there would always be that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that something isn't normal. The red pill would solve that nagging feeling, but make (at least a stage of my) life very difficult. I'll have to face challenges I've never had to deal with before -- multiple doctors appointments, facing society, possibly being disowned by my father,discrimination, extra expenses... I know I could handle those challenges, but I would just rather have an easy life as a female. Going to the gender therapist feels like taking the red pill for me. It's me admitting that I am not normal, saying that I'll never be able to years from now say "wow, I am glad I got past that phase". The caul will be pulled from my eyes, and I'll never be able to blindly push those feelings away.
This is something that I just need to do, and I need to force myself to stop delaying. I'll be happier in the long run if I just go and get this over with.
Today I woke up and had a really nice morning. I felt wide awake, and did TurboFire HIIT 30, showered, headed off to school, and ate my fruit with Greek yogurt and had coffee in the car like usual. While waiting for the train at the station, I was reading a sign when suddenly my eyes felt like they were going to explode and I saw these weird little circles floating around. I thought maybe it was just the lights inside, so I went outside but my eyes still hurt and things were blurry. Once on the train, my eyes started hurting worse and then my head started aching behind my eyes and up to the sides of my head, and I felt weak and shaky. I had to just sit there with my eyes closed and I kept thinking I was going to vomit, but I held it because there'd be no place to vomit but in the aisle. I ended up vomiting in the bathroom once we got into the city. I kept feeling like I was going to pass out, and on the subway I kept getting queasy.
I usually avoid going to the doctor's, but I went to my school's health and wellness services since I knew I wouldn't be able to go to class like that. They did a bunch of tests on my reflexes, because I think they thought it could be something else at first because I used to get seizures as a child. In the end, they concluded that I was having a migraine, and it was just unusual because most people only have migraines on one side of the head.
I walked back to the train station to avoid the bumpiness of the subway making things worse, but walking wasn't much better. It started raining and the sidewalks were all nasty from the blizzard, and my umbrella wouldn't stay open so I got all wet. A strong gust of wind came and blew a chunk of ice into my right eye, which wasn't nice considering my eye felt like it was already going to pop. For some reason, I found it to be quite hilarious though, and started laughing hysterically, and I kept randomly laughing about it once I was on the rail.
I am feeling better now even though my head still hurts a little and my stomach still feels weird; they told me to take Excedrine Migraine and wrote a prescription for something else that I was to take at home. The prescription make me sleepy, so I spent a few hours in bed until my dog woke me up wanting to play. I ate some chicken and rice, and I haven't vomited that up, but now I am craving Ben & Jerry's Peach Cobbler ice cream, though ice cream always makes me want to vomit after I eat it, even when I am feeling perfectly fine.
I hope this is completely gone in the moring, because I don't want it to mess up my workout.
I just got a heart rate monitor, and I am loving it! I haven't been using it for ChaLean Extreme, since it's mostly weight lifting and not as much cardio, so when I add it into MyFitnessPal it doesn't even ask for calories burned. But, I used for TurboFire Fire60 Class today, and I've been burning way more calories than I ever thought. Today I burned 620 gross calories and 568 net calories. I've only been logging around 300-400 in MyFitnessPal based on their estimates for "high intensity cardio".
Today I started making the STP following the directions here.
I think mine is too big so far. I am not sure; I've never used an STP before so I have no idea what size they're supposed to be. I'll post a picture when I am done.
The Blizzard Nemo is over now. I am not sure how much snow we got, but it was quite a lot. My dad said he hasn't seen this much snow since '78. Miraculously we didn't loose power. Typically whenever there's a storm we loose it because of all the tree branches up here. It flickered a few times but that was it, and I was able to do ChaLean and yoga today before heading out to shovel.
I got my car dug out, and our neighbor came by with his backhoe and snowplow and shoveled out most of our driveway. We just have this giant mound now that's taller than I am. My puppy isn't too happy, it's hard for her to find the perfect spot to pee.
I kind of made up a recipe today, I had a ripe avocado that I needed to use up before it got too soft and I wasn't in the mood to make my Avocado Bread. So, I came up with this recipe below, it's seems nice and tropical which makes me feel nice and happy in this snowy weather.
Wish I Was in Florida Dessert
Ingredients:
One ripe hass avocado
1/4 cup freshly diced strawberries
1/4 cup coconut flakes, sweetened or unsweetened
1) Cut your avocado and remove the seed. Scoop the insides out into a cup or bowl.
2) Stir the avocado until it is smooth. Add in the strawberries and coconut. Stir until well mixed.
I did my day 30 measurements (technically it's only day 29, but tomorrow is a "rest" day and I'd rather do some yoga before heading off to school), and everything is good so far. I've lost an inch on my waist and hips, lost 3/4 inches on my abductors, lost 1/4 inch on both thighs, and I've gained 1/4 inch on my biceps. I can see a lot more definition in my arms, and when I am doing my yoga, I can see the muscles in my thighs popping out a lot when doing the upward facing boat pose. ChaLean Extreme makes you do a lot of squats and sumo squats, so my legs are a lot stronger which has helped me feel more confident doing some yoga poses like Brave Warrior and Half Moon. I can also hold the Crane pose for roughly a minute! I also have a few "manly" hairs that have starting growing on my arms.
I ordered the BowFlex Selectech 552 dumbbells, and they should be here on Wednesday. I think I would've had a little more progress if I had heavier weights. I only have a set of 5-lb and 10-lb weights, and they are too light on most of the exercises for me. I bought some 2-lb wrist weights to wear while lifting in order to make the weights I have heavier, but now even those are too light. I couldn't find any used dumbbells on Craigslist that were reasonably priced (most were being sold at store prices or really close), and a pair of new 15-lb dumbbells would cost me about $60. So, I figured it would be cheaper overall, and save me tons of space, to just get the Selectech. Weights get more expensive as they get heavier, so if those 15-lbs get too light for me, how much is a 20-lb, then 25-lb, etc. going to cost me? Probably about just as much as the Selectech would over a period of time. I intend to get a lot stronger and keep on lifting after I finish this program, so it will be nice to have all the weights I need up to 52.5 lbs.
I have made some changes to the ChaLean Extreme program. I've added in the ab workout video a few days a week instead of just the one day a week like it's scheduled. I've also been adding in TurboFire (usually either Fire 60 or HIIT 30) on the weekends, and I've also been continuing with my yoga.
I'll do a review of the program once I've finished the whole thing.
