Food: This week was again fairly good. I was within my limits, I was within my macros. There was extremely little cheating. And, I set a record low on sodium (since the start of 2019) at only 107% of my goal, averaging 2475 mg/day.
Exercise: The good news is that I maintained the status quo. As in, this is the second week in a row that I did weights 3x/week, which is the goal. And, I did cardio of some form for ≥40 minutes (often just a few seconds more than 40 minutes) 5x/week, which is the goal. There is still the goal of doing 15 minutes of core exercises every day, but considering that it took me 12 weeks to fully get into the goal routine of weight lifting, I’m okay with it at this point. As I wrote last week, this is a journey, not an absolute.
Sleep: I got at least 8 hours every night, but it was not enough, apparently, since I napped a lot. As I noted earlier, I think it’s because of doing weight lifting, for that is the primary thing that’s changed. So, I’m going to try to get more sleep each night, but we’ll see. Hopefully, my body will adapt.
Measurements: I was okay with my bodyfat percentage only going down by 0.1% since I was “ahead” last week by more than a week, and so it effectively didn’t change. The spread between the different measurements was also larger this week at ±2.70% as opposed to last week (which was a minimum since April) of ±2.43%.
Weight, however, after last week’s 2.2 lb drop, only went down about 0.7 lbs on average. I have ideas on why, but bottom-line, it put me more behind of where I’d hoped to be this week, basically I’m 2 weeks behind. AKA, the two weeks of travel. Sooo… yeah. Importantly, this has not affected my motivation since I am still seeing improvements. I just need to buckle down and be cleaner about things and plow through it.
Points: Yay! A high this week, highest it’s ever been, at +72 pts. Basically, I got all the points I could without doing the core exercises in the morning. Each one of those is ±2 points, so not doing them cost me 2·7 = –14 points, while if I had done them, I would’ve gotten +14 points. If they were ignored (didn’t factor into the points), I’d be at +86 this week. But, this is why I arranged the scoring system the way I did: Not doing them costs me something, and it eats into the positivity from other things to lower my score.
Looking Over the Week: To do this, I’m looking back at what I had hoped to do. I had thought I might push through the –18.5 max-min point on weight, but it didn’t quite happen. –18.2 lbs. Close, but no cigar. I had also hoped to continue doing weights, effectively maintaining the status quo with fitness this week, which is what I did so that’s a positive. And I think that, overall, this week was okay. Again, not great on the measurements going down, but it’s one week, and the long-term trend is what’s important.
Looking Ahead 1 Week: So that means that, looking ahead one week, I really expect to hit that –18.5 lbs max from all previous attempts, hopefully the bodyfat percent will go down, maintain food levels and be even better about not taking any nibbles. For sleep, I’m hoping to average closer to 9 hours per night and we’ll see if this tiredness in the afternoon goes away. I really lose a lot of time napping in the afternoon, and I can’t afford that this week — almost literally, since I have an $870k grant proposal due on Thursday and it is not as far along as it should be at this point. So, that’s kinda why this week, I hope to just stay the course and make steady progress, again not stressing about not adding in the core stuff in the morning if I don’t get to it. I also plan to keep sleeping with this pillow under my knee in order to minimize the discomfort during the day, and maybe even fix whatever might be going on. I kinda just think it’s that I weigh too much.
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