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Fresh Starts

Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.”

Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

It is fitting to start a new project and a new era with a quote by my most favorite and beloved childhood fictional heroine, Anne Shirley.

Anne was probably the reason I became a writer. She is certainly the reason I became a poet. While fictional, she was and has always been as real to me as any friend. When I find myself at a loss, I can always find inspiration in the pages of those old books.

I started writing poetry and short stories around the age of ten or eleven, signing my name at the bottom Anna Farley. And with a new beginning, I found myself back to wanting to write, if nothing ever else, under that old moniker.

And with a return to my maiden name as an author, I undertook the task of rebranding my books and building a new website. A new look, a new purpose, to suit the new me with my old name.

It is weird because I think about my dad when I hear the name Farley and while I think his feelings would be mixed, he would smile to think about his little Annie Farley, with her little poetry books, her purpose in writing and he would be glad.

Today is indeed the first day of the rest of my life. And while this rebranding may be a very small thing, I feel rejuvenated and re-inspired to be all the best that I can be and fling myself headfirst into writing with passion. With purpose.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”

Albert Camus

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Best of Me: New & Selected Poetry

This month, I published what is my 10th poetry collection. Best of Me: New & Selected Poetry marks the occasion by beginning with about 100 new poems and then picks up in part two with the best poetry from the past 20+ years.

As I examined this collection I noticed something interesting. Despite honestly describing hardship I have faced including my infertility struggle, grief, the weight of bad decisions, and so on, it’s all tied together with hope.

It caused me to reflect on the things that have influenced me over the course of my life. Setting aside the obvious things like my family and faith, I recall that even as a child I admired people who faced adversity with hope, cheerfulness and grace. My two fictional childhood influences who remain to this day are Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables and Maria from The Sound of Music. Anne was a rejected orphan, unloved, passed around, overlooked, but still a dreamer, still choosing the best everyday. Maria was forced out into the world to face a frightening reality set before her where she “had confidence in confidence alone” and faced it with grace, won people with her warmth, and faced challenges with a hopeful courage.

And I see these influences in all of my writing.

Please check out my collection Best of Me, which is truly the best of me, the best of my attitude, the best of my hope, and the best of my work.

https://a.co/d/cwx0087

I Spend 4 Hours a Month Lifting Weights

It’s true. I looked through my Garmin data and I spend slightly less than 4 hours on average in the gym lifting weights.

Of course, this is not to say I’m not otherwise active. And lifting weights alone does not make one “fit.” I walk, hike, bike, play with my dogs. I like to be active.

But to be strong and muscular, I’m spending an average of slightly less than 4 hours per MONTH (not per week) in the gym.

Does it work? Yes. I follow a Mike Mentzer Heavy Duty (ish) style plan of low rep, super heavy intensity to failure. I get stronger and I’m far stronger on average than most women who lift. I’m also muscular.

Is it the only thing that works? No. I’ve worked other programs and they’ve also worked.

The point is, to those who say they don’t have time, I spend 0.56% of my time in the gym lifting (this data is based on a year’s worth of lifting stats). And in this time frame I get stronger, build muscle which is healthy and anti aging and save myself tons of time for the rest of my goofing around, work and other responsibilities.

When I first began lifting in 2019 I was very fortunate that I immersed myself in good quality fitness content and didn’t waste time on stupid stuff. I was focused, diligent and consistent. Between 2019-2022 I worked out 6 days a week for about 35 minutes on average. A lot more than I do now, but probably still a lot less than most serious lifters.

And I made good progress. Not as much as I’ve made doing Heavy Duty. But I made consistent progress in getting lean, building muscle and getting strong in those years. So obviously it worked.

Discipline and consistency mean the most when it comes to strength training. There’s nothing else that can make up for the lack of them.

But if you are a busy person, or hate the gym, or have kids, or work 2 jobs or whatever else it may be, if you want to be strong, you don’t need to spend 6 hours a week lifting.

Granted, lifting 4 hours a month to be strong or jacked does not make one fit and healthy. That requires additional things, primarily a good diet and some decent active time like walking. But we should be doing those things anyway!

It is a privilege that God made our bodies so capable of being strong and fit and healthy. We should honor Him by sacrificing some time to being grateful for that gift.

I yearn to find a woman to train in this manner and see what I could show her she’s capable of in short, hard and infrequent training sessions!

Fitness as a Passion and a Study

I have never been someone anyone would have viewed as having any athletic ability. At all. I remember a stand off with a teacher in grade three, she was upset with me that during gym she had everyone running the soccer field and I was walking. She said I had to run. I told her I would walk all day but I will never run (to be fair, I have had bad knees since I was basically a toddler). She said my parents would be upset about my behavior and I said she should ask them because I seriously doubted that.

I got my first gym membership at 18 when I began college. It was my first time really trying anything like a plan or program for fitness. But between the ages of 18 and 35 I was basically just exercising because I knew I should, with very little purpose and no plan. I had various periods during this time where I was in decent shape, my endurance was good but I didn’t look fit and I still hadn’t figured out what worked versus when I was just stumbling into luck.

In 2019, I decided that I was going to pursue weight lifting. That I wasn’t going to just wing it. That I was going to study, understand the science, follow a program and set goals in blocks of 4-6 months to monitor progress. I was lucky that I found some quality content on social media for how to start since I basically had no idea what I was doing.

I had no one to help me. I didn’t know anyone really into weight lifting. I read articles. I found quality YouTube content and watched videos. I recorded myself and compared my form to what I saw in the YouTube videos.

I read studies to understand which exercises worked which muscles and how. I was extremely interested in getting the most bang for my buck on a lift (working compound moves versus accessories). I became passionate about becoming strong and I decided I wanted to be as strong as I was capable of becoming.

My first two years I made a lot of progress in terms of my strength, physique and mindset and I credit that to my appetite for studying weight lifting, reading articles and clinical studies. I wasn’t goofing around aimlessly, I was a student of the process.

Strength training is a hobby of mine, but it’s more than that. I’ve invested myself in the learning. I’ve helped others build plans and programs to get started. I’ve since met others, including my husband, who I’ve been able to learn so much from because my husband is like me. He studied. He pursued the knowledge and became a master. He wasn’t just interested in becoming muscular or fit. He was interested in mastering whatever style of training he was doing, in understanding why things work.

Together we have experimented with different programs, nutrtion plans, we have spent countless hours watching content to educate ourselves.

I follow content and see my husband who have had different levels of strength and different styles of physique over the years and I understand that for most people it takes many years to build the strength or physique they have. My husband is 20 years in.

I think about my education in this area now and how far I’ve come. This year will be 6 years since I embarked on this journey, investing not only my time and physical energy in this but becoming a student of the process. I’m not where I want to be. But I’m curious and excited about where I’ll be when I hit 10 years and beyond!

I’m in it for the long game!

6 months on keto!

Today marks 6 months exactly since I made the decision to adopt a very clean, strict keto diet. I did not do this for the gym or weight loss or anything else but to improve my health, see some biomarkers improve and reduce my inflammation.

I will say I’ve always been someone who would LOVE to be able to out train a bad diet but I learned almost a decade ago that isn’t possible. If 2 grueling hours in the gym everyday permitted me to eat like an animal I’d gladly make that trade. But it doesn’t work that way and I’ve learned over the years to build a decent diet around the gym and year by year I’ve done better and better at finding a good balance.

I also have some food sensitivities that have made macros challenging and since I was in my mid thirties I was plagued by cyclical migraines that were becoming a bane to me. So even before going keto I was avoiding certain foods to dodge the issues I was having and in doing so, I was healing.

November 13, 2024 I made the choice to adopt a clean keto lifestyle. No processed foods. No grains at all. Strict, clean, whole foods only. No seed oils. And very little artificial components. I actually did this at the advice of a mentor of mine who was not my boss then but is now and I’m grateful for the wonderful turn my career has taken!

The changes in my health and body since making this change are both drastic and subtle. I have not yet had my blood work done, that will be in the next few months and what I’m looking to see are:

  • Lower inflammation markers (hs-CRP)
  • An improvement triglycerides/HDL ratio (mine was already good and I want to see it great)
  • Signs of improved metabolic function

I’m confident I will see all of these things.

My mental clarity is improved. I have zero fatigue during the day and surprisingly, my fatigue level doesn’t change much even during my workouts, EVEN doing a Mike Mentzer Heavy Duty training style where I go to utter failure. I leave with muscle fatigue but with the energy to go on.

My digestion is about as peak as I could imagine. Despite eating almost no fiber most days, I’m extremely regular, no issues, healthy “evacuation” 😂 and way less gut disruption, gas and even heart burn.

My skin! At almost 42, I’m mindful of skin changes as I refuse to do anything unnatural but I also want my skin to age well. I’ve had rampant eczema on my hands disappear (this happened within 2 weeks so was surely connected to something I was eating). I had what I suspect was a small age spot that has disappeared. And I have had some reddish patches on one cheek similar to rosacea that have also all but completely disappeared.

As for my body, I’ve lost almost 30lbs. Much of that has been slow, and I don’t believe I have lost muscle. As ketones and protein prevent muscle wasting, my loss has been mainly fat (after the initial loss of water), and it has been extremely easy. I’m not sure if my weight loss is done. I’m letting this process work its way through without worrying about it. Just focusing on sticking to the plan, lifting heavy and doing my usual health care for myself.

For the first time since 2016 I’ve stopped tracking my food intake and continue to lose weight. After an initial struggle in the gym due to fat adaptation (my body going from adapting to glucose as energy to fat), I’ve regained much of my lost strength. And with the fat loss my frame looks more jacked than before – though I doubt I’ve gained muscle, it’s just more apparent now.

Moreover, this has been easy. Once adjusting to what I do eat versus don’t, there has been no challenge to the diet itself. People call it discipline but I don’t feel like I’m needing to engage my discipline in this. In the past 6 months I’ve had Christmas, a family vacation, a job change, a week long business trip, the death of a pet, and my husband suffering an injury and through it all we’ve both very easily stuck to the plan, we have not deviated even once. And that has not been hard.

I said I’d give this 6 months and then evaluate and see if I would carry on, but there’s no doubt I’ll continue. I feel good. My energy is good. My workouts are strong and energetic. My physique is improving and my inflammation just feels so much lower. I feel younger. I don’t miss carbs at all. I’ve adapted and it has been the easiest nutrtion change I’ve ever made.

Rhyme & Reason

Last month, in the hectic holiday fun of planning and celebrating Christmas and my second wedding anniversary, as well as a fun trip, I published my 9th poetry book.

Yes, my 9th!

I’m excited about this book. I feel like I stretched myself a bit as a writer. I went outside my box a little bit. I wrote about all the things on my heart. I wrote with humility. I wrote with adoration. I wrote with sadness.

I always try to write in ways where other people can relate. It’s never too specific to me. That my words might help someone else tell their own story. And I feel like my last few books I’ve really gotten better at this.

My husband is part of the Prison Fellowship Academy where he does discipleship in prison with the men there. He has taken in some of my poetry and the men have read it and have enjoyed it enough that they’ve asked him to get my books into the library within the prison.

It’s wild to me that these men in these very hard circumstances, with very hard backgrounds, who know things about life I cannot imagine, can relate to my words and they find them hopeful!

That’s the beauty of poetry.

Rhyme & Reason

40 Days on Keto

I’ve always been someone who “starts today.” I don’t wait for tomorrow morning, Monday or New Year’s Day to implement a course correction. I do it the moment it becomes evident to me. My mom says I was even like this as a little girl (and fun fact, my husband says this quality is “hot” and that makes me laugh!)

In 2016 when I was in grad school there was a day when I realized I’d gained some weight in grad school and, it was a Wednesday, I decided I needed to start tracking my food. I lost 30lbs in 16 weeks and kept it off barring times in my journey where I’ve intentionally allowed weight gain.

In 2019, I decided my excessive cardio wasn’t doing what I wanted. I wanted to change my body composition, get more muscular and be strong. I put a plan into place to achieve this and the results are history. That was on a Thursday.

Well, about 40 days ago, also on a Wednesday, I made a change. I had had some blood work done and while my results were generally very good, I had one marker that concerned me in the event I started developing inflammation. I started researching and had one very impactful conversation, and embarked on my journey of a very clean keto lifestyle.

I had never really thought much about this before. Recently a family member went carnivore and has had great results in terms of reduced pain and inflammation. I probably put in about 10 hours of research before pulling the trigger for myself on my keto change. And I’ve probably done 30 hours since then. I always develop an expert level knowledge in whatever adventure I take!

I had known people in the past that did keto but it was always a very dirty keto. Packaged keto foods. Eating as many carbs as they were allowed. Not necessarily eating clean foods. I am not interested in that.

For the past 40 some days I have, I have eaten only clean, whole foods. Lots of grass fed beef, pasture raised eggs, raw nuts, no artificial foods (and yes, that includes my beloved Diet Pepsi!), no sugar, no processed food at all. And I’m amazed at where I am in just 40 days.

First of all, there have been some spots on my skin, eczema and some sun damage, that have already completely healed. My acid reflux that has plagued me since I was in my twenties has quieted down almost entirely. I’m off my omeprazole, and rarely get heartburn. My arthritis is not bothering me, the chronic pain and stiffness in my knees and wrists abd back has gotten better by mayhe 60%. My energy level during the day is very steady, I’m not sleepy except at night. My sleep scores have skyrocketed (and I was already a good sleeper). I have zero carb or sugar cravings, and I’m not at all compelled to eat between meals. I can see bones in my feet that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen even when I was quite slim which makes me think I had inflammation there. And I’ve lost about 15lbs so far without trying at all.

Was there an adaption phase? Yes. But in my first day of my decision I was also coming down with a regular old seasonal flu, so if the keto flu happened it was overshadowed by the terrible sick I felt otherwise fo4 a few days. By the time my flu subsided, I’d already gone through the worst of sugar detox.

However, there was still an adaption. For the first two weeks, as I figured out electrolyte balance and proper hydration on keto (you need more water since your body isn’t holding water in carbs). I was having fatigue doing normal chores and my heart rate would get up pretty high carrying laundry and it was unsettling.

There is an adaption period when your body goes from using glucose for energy to producing ketones and burning fat. It took me about 5 days to get into ketosis (I bought strips and a blood meter), but even then any effort outside the normal was very taxing as my body tried to figure out how to get energy. By the third week, this went away. And since then my workouts get better and better. I’m able to sustain my energy while weight lifting better than before, and I’m no more tired or hungry at the end of my workout than at the start, it’s very steady. I feel like this improves with every workout and my readings tell me this will continue to improve over several months.

I’m enjoying the food and the longer I go into it the fewer carbs I eat. I’m averaging maybe 20g of net carbs per day right now which really is a good place for me in terms of my digestion. I can easily see how many people transition from keto to carnivore. We eat lots of eggs and meat and cheese and we make carnivore ice cream that is so good. The carbs we are eating are coming mostly from things like asparagus, bell peppers, zucchini and I use a Truvani protein powder and add in organic maca powder and psyllium husk and ground flaxseed. That’s the bulk of my carb intake.

What I’m most surprised by is how easy it is. How good I feel. How satisfied I am with the food I am eating. I do not miss carbs. I do not miss sugar. I’m impressed everyday with the continuing benefits. My gut feels good. I get no headaches. My body feels good and energetic.

I’m excited as I feel like this is a next level move for me. My health is improving. My quality of life is improving. And initially my husband wasn’t going to follow me on this journey but he was so impressed with me by day 10 that he changed his mind and he’s doing fantastic also! And it’s a great journey to be on together!

Living the Dream: My New Poetry Collection

I am super proud of this collection, and excited to share it with the world. My newest poetry book Living the Dream, is available in paperbook and ebook version on Amazon.

Living the Dream https://a.co/d/7VhmQtN

From the age of 12 I always wanted to be a “published poet” and I’m grateful for everyone who has supported my writing and shared it and bought my books. I have a couple extremely loyal supporters and that’s more than anyone can ask.

https://a.co/d/7VhmQtN