The More of Less Report (May)

Well, this has not been a great month. (See my post from last week for more details.) I have given into plenty of vices and I am not proud of it. I am not very proud of anything right now. I am just surviving. But anyway, onto how that has affected my year of less.

January-LESS scrolling: Did I scroll less this month? Oh no. I scrolled a lot. Nir Eyal (2019) writes in Indistractable that people scroll to escape discomfort. I definitely did that this month. I scrolled to distract myself from both the physical pain of my injury, as well as the emotional and mental pain of it. I scrolled to distract myself. I scrolled to numb. None of it really worked. It just prolonged the hard work of grief that I need to do. It also perpetuated the continually shorter attention span that I seem to be developing.

February-LESS picking: My habits have been all over the place this month. I kept up some of my skin care, and just suffered through at other times. Honestly, I did not give this goal much, if any priority.

March-LESS hunger (judgment): Of the few goals I made for April, the one I did keep was to increase my intake of healthy fats. Well, it was too little too late. I got that injury I have been fearing. From what I read, not fueling well enough keeps bone from repairing itself as fast as it should.

When my injury happened, my training load went down, a lot. I had a hard time even getting in the minimum grams required from my carb load. I got a little bit hungrier after running, but still not as much as usual.

The first few days of my injury, I was not very hungry at all. Then, despite my much lower intensity, and lower volume training, my hunger spiked. Apparently this is normal, as injury recover boosts energy needs 10-20% (Hughen, 2024). While in the past, I had tried to reduce dairy and processed foods to address my high cholesterol, now I am here for all of it. I imagine I am going to gain weight from what I am doing, and that may be uncomfortable, but if I want to heal (and I do), that is the price I will pay.

April-LESS goals: Well, this one unintentionally came to fruition. My goals were to rehab what I thought was tendinopathy to run another race at the end of the month. I can't even do the exercises I wanted to do to get ready for the race, and the race goal is long-gone. I did read Sara Hall's (2026) book For the Love of the Grind, though, so I met that goal. Hallelujah for non-running goals....

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Apparently this year of less is also going to include less running. Hopefully it lets me rest. Hopefully it helps me reprioritize. My goal with less was to focus on what really matters. I guess I am going to learn that a very hard way....

References:

Eyal, N. (2019). Indistractable: How to control your attention and choose your life. Ben Bella Books.

Hall, S. (2026). For the love of the grind: A memoir. St. Martin's Press.

Hughen, C. (Host). (2024, October 22). Nutritional priorities during rehab w/ Adrian Chavez (No. 171) [Audio podcast episode]. In E3 r3hab. https://e3rehab.libsyn.com/171-nutritional-priorities-during-rehab-w-adrian-chavez

What We Cooked and Ate (Week 20)

This Week's Eats:

Chocolate chip Greek yogurt muffins (Hummusapien)

Mississippi chicken chili (365 Days of Slow + Pressure Cooking)

Mississippi pot roast Meal Prep in an Instant

Peanut butter-lemon sauce (Easy Vegetarian Slow Cooker) 

Sourdough pumpkin oatmeal cookies (Everyday Homemade)

Noteworthy Repeats:

Big-batch Instant Pot white beans (Epicurious)

Cottage cheese egg bake (The Real Food Dietitians)

Chickpea "tuna" salad (Drugstore Divas)

Freezer Pull-Outs:

Five-minute chicken gravy (Fixed on Fresh)

Shredded chicken (365 Days of Crockpot)

Sourdough discard blueberry bagels (This Jess Cooks)

A Forced Break

One thousand, two hundred and sixty-two days, and my run streak is over. (Well, it's been over for a while at the time of this publishing.) Running was always there for me, until it wasn't. I experienced a banner year last year in running, and felt like I had finally found "my thing." Now, I am no longer a runner. I probably pushed too hard. I knew that some things were not quite right, and I pushed on through anyways. And now here I lay.

That stress fracture I worried about pre- and post-Shiprock? Well, it turns out my differential diagnosis skills are pretty decent. That is exactly what I have: a break in my bones from too much: too much impact, too much intensity, too much pushing through the pain.

I have been through a barrage of tests, from the initial x-rays, to bloodwork, to MRIs, to bone density scans, and more. Though we cannot pinpoint a precise cause for my stress fracture, quite a few things are not quite right. I am getting treatment from a team of professionals, and now I have to wait to see how my body will respond.

My running goals are on hold for now, possibly permanently. Only time will tell if I get back to running at all. If I do, it probably will not be like it was before. I am older. I broke my body. I don't want to break it again.

If I am honest, I probably needed this break. I have a type A personality. Had I not broken my body, I would have kept pushing through. That's me. That's running. I have time, and hopefully now motivation, to attend to my health. This break in my bones is revealing just how tired I was, and forcing me to rest. Time off is helping me explore other ways to move my body (and also forcing me to make peace with a lot less activity). I hope I recover. I hope I come back stronger. Only God knows if that will happen. Whatever may come, may God use it for His glory and my good. 

San Francisco, a Deux

My brother got married outside of San Francisco on Saturday. Our AirBnB checkout time on Sunday was 11 AM, and our flight left the San Francisco airport at 7:16 PM. What do we do with the time in between? We asked? Make a day date of San Francisco, (on mutual agreement this time, see last year's post for the backstory on that).

First up, how to get from where we were to San Francisco? We took an Uber from the AirBnB and then took the ferry over from Sausalito. 

This was entirely the genius of my husband, and at $14 a person, probably cheaper than another Uber ride, and more scenic! From the top deck with saw the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge (where I ran last year), Alcatraz, the port, and more. We also spotted dolphins, a pelican, and sea lions.

Once in San Francisco, of course we had to visit Boudain Bakery again. It was a bit of a walk, but worth it. I think we even sat at the same high-top table.

I wanted food, but not necessarily a sandwich. My husband asked what sounded good, and all I could think off was fish and chips, so we schlepped over to Broad Street Oyster Co. (Note that while we both wore/carried our backpacks, my husband pulled our 46 pound piece of checked luggage this whole way.) 

We were in Ghirardelli Square, and my husband wanted to try Dubai style chocolate, so we made a stop

(I did not think the chocolate was that great, but I am a dark chocolate girl and not the biggest fan of pistachios, so no big surprise. My husband likes to take a treat from travels back to his office, so he plans to share the rest of the treats with them.)

Then into the cable car line. (We wanted to ride last year, but did not have the time.) I would say we waited about an hour to get to the car, and then the drivers packed that thing full. But while we waited, we got to see the workers change the car tracks, and heard an accordion player perform.

The ride was much noisier than I expected, but at $9 a person, it was cheaper than getting another Uber or Waymo (since Waymo does run in this city).

From the cable car, we took the BART into the airport. Time burned? Six hours. Money spent? Well, probably as much as we would have paid for a better flight time. But hey, we got a day date out of it, and a maxed out one at that.

San Francisco, a Deux? Thumbs up. And after enjoying the respite of cool temperatures during our already hot Arizona summer, maybe we will be back?

What We Cooked and Ate (Week 19)

This Week's Eats:

Pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookie bites (Joy in My Kitchen)

Noteworthy Repeats:

Barn raising casserole (365 Days of Slow + Pressure Cooking) (Left over from last week)

Big-batch Instant Pot white beans (Epicurious)

Cottage cheese egg bake (The Real Food Dietitians)

Chickpea "tuna" salad (Drugstore Divas)

Shredded chicken (365 Days of Crockpot)

Freezer Pull-Outs:

No knead pan pizza (Budget Bytes) 

Savory sourdough discard vegan zucchini bread (Adapted from Atlyyt on Reddit)

Seeded PB oat energy balls (The Dietitian Runner)

Sourdough bread

Thin and crispy pizza (Budget Bytes)

Real Life Marriage: Telling My Husband What to Do

My husband asked me for a list of things to do. I had tried giving him lists before and they hadn't worked, but he asked for one this time, so I gave it to him. To my surprise, he actually completed it. And then he asked for another list the next day.

Lists are my thing. I like them...for me. It kind of stinks to have to give my husband a list of things to do, though. There is something within me that resists giving him lists because I feel like a school mistress giving her pupils homework. But hey, if this works, and this is what it looks like to share the household load, so be it.

The only other alternatives to giving my husband a list of things to do are to do all the things myself (which results in me either feeling bitter, or melting down, often both) or expect him to remember the things to do and constantly nag him (also ineffective). My husband tells me that if I give him a list of things to do, maybe he will eventually learn the daily tasks. Maybe, maybe not, but it's worth a shot.

We've been at this sharing household duties thing for a while now, and I must say, we are still pretty bad at it. I do not communicate as much as I should. I don't communicate as clearly as I should. I still make way too many decisions on my own, and I would still like my husband to initiate more tasks himself. But a few things are going better, so maybe the lists have helped.

Mi Madre

I didn't grow up speaking Spanish, but somewhere along the way, I did start calling Mom, "Mi Madre." I meant it as a term of endearment, but the more I called her that, the more I came to attach meaning to the words: "Mi," mine, and "Madre," mother. That last word is so limiting. My mother became my mother by birthing me, but past that, she has done/is so much more.

Growing up, my mother fed me. She helped clothe me. She cooked for me, tended to me when I was sick, encouraged me, prayed for me, schooled me. She taught me about Jesus. She taught me about life. She read to us the classics (think Les Miserables by Victor Hugo), as well classics to her (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the like). She chauffeured us. When the time came (and I frustrated my dad nearly to death), she taught me to drive.

When I was away from home, she wrote me letters. She master-minded a lot of my birthday, Christmas, and other celebration gifts (and still does). When I visited, even as a married person, she let me rest.

My mom is strong, resilient, sturdy. She's endured a lot. She endures a lot. She still prays. She still encourages. She's a role model, and a mentor.

Words, English or otherwise, cannot really contain the wonder that is my mother. So on Mother's Day, I guess the best I can do is just give thanks that she is "mi madre," a gift from God to me to show me just a little more of God and His infinite, immeasurable love. If her love is any indication, the love of God has got to be pretty great!