Full disclosure: I’m writing this joint post on the 16th of June.
So, first up is the driving day, Sunday June 14. I packed and then left the house at 11am, getting to my parents 18 hrs later at 7am (+2 hr time zone change). The many different foods in the infographic are because I’m now in “maintenance” mode for a week, with increased calories and zero weight-loss goal, but I still need to hit a roughly 30.0% / 34.1% / 35.9% fat/carb/protein split. So instead of just eating Doritos® during the entire drive, I needed to eat lots of protein. Which was not hard because there was very little else to do during the drive. I had originally planned on exercising for a half hour before leaving in the morning, but, that didn’t happen at all.
After getting into Cincinnati, OH, at 7am and having a 12pm telecon, I went to sleep. I had that telecon, a phone call, a 45-minute break, and then 3 hrs of a telecon that I just cut out of for the last half hour because my part was done. And I didn’t go to bed until 2am (wish I could say it was because I was working or doing something productive, but it wasn’t).
So … going from 1680 cal/day to 2220 cal/day while maintaining a high protein intake is not easy. I was forcing myself to eat, so at some point I just said “screw it” and treated the 2220 cal/day as a max, but so long as I hit the macros, then it was okay to be under. So, it was an 1850-calorie day. While maintaining the macros.
I also tried out my dad’s elliptical again. And, I think I finally figured out why I hate it: The motion is completely different. On mine (well, my boyfriend’s dad’s), there is more of a climbing motion, so the muscles being worked out are the glutes and the calves, and probably the bicep femoris. On my dad’s elliptical, it’s much more of a sliding motion, like cross-country skiing. So, the muscles are much more the quads and the calves, much less the glutes. And, apparently, my quads are way out of shape.
I was moving at half my normal steps per minute, and yet my heart rate was higher than normal. My goal was just 15 minutes, so when I hit 15min 11sec, I stopped. I was sweating like crazy and my legs really hurt. It’s crazy how the “same” piece of equipment that has such a limited function can be so different between models. So, while I didn’t even come close to my normal goal of 40 min/day of cardio, I did get something in, which means I’m already breaking habits that I fall into when seeing my parents.
Unfortunately, weight shot up by 2 lbs. I’m assuming that’s because of all the food from the previous day with extremely limited motion and it’ll drop back down, but still, it was unpleasant to be >215 lbs again.
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