Food: Food was fairly good this week. Lots of temptations, moderating on intake, etc. etc. I said last week that this would be my final week on “cut v. 6.13,” which is the 210±5 lbs -based calorie intake. This coming week, regardless of actual weight, I am switching to one down, which I’ll discuss in the last section of this post.
Exercise: Well, I still didn’t do morning core exercises! Grr. But I am maintaining, now three weeks in a row, doing a full course of weight lifting 3x/week and ≥40 minutes of cardio ≥5x/week, per my stated goals. Hence, part of why this is another +72 points week. Number of steps is also up, I suspect because I’ve gone a bit longer on cardio this week, by about 15 minutes total. And maybe pacing a bit more between weight sets. I mentioned this earlier in a daily summary, but I also this week upped the level on my elliptical by 1, and it’s a significant change. My average heart rate on the elliptical is 139 bpm as opposed to 133 bpm (previous 2 weeks), and calories burned this week averaged 11.2/min vs 10.1/min. So, yeah, it’s more effort, but if that’s what’s causing the weight drop (as opposed to finally my stress from work going down), I’m willing to put up with it. That’s basically 11% more calories for the same time input. And, with the slight additional time on the elliptical, that’s 20% more calories this week, or, about 1.5 doughnuts!! 🍩 So, yeah!
Sleep: Sleep was up this week, both based on how long I was in bed overnight (8.9 hrs), and my watch claims I got another ≈20 minutes of actual sleep, on average, this week. I’ve been a bit less tired, especially compared with two weeks ago, so that’s an improvement.
Measurements: FINALLY! Weight is finally going down. It took ’til mid-week, so the average is actually only –1.2 lbs this week despite the goal of about –1.55, but I really need to focus on it moving in the correct direction, and it doing that, as opposed to not quite as fast as I would like it to. Bodyfat percentage went down slightly, 25.0% vs 25.3%, so it is now the measurement that’s not going down quite as fast as I wanted. Which is a marked change from, like, two months in a row -worth of bf% tracking. I guess we’ll see if the extra cardio and time on the weights makes a change this coming week.
Points: Points have been remarkably consistent, this is the third week in a row at +72. Basically I’m hitting everything I want except not doing those 15 minutes of core exercises every day.
Personal Records: I think it bears repeating here that I flew past my low of 206.5 lbs in 2019 to the lowest weight I’ve been since December 2017. Granted, it was one measurement, today, but I like to think that I’ve now succeeded in erasing more than 2.5 years of weight gain. That means that some people who I’ve met have never known me to be at this low of a weight, or a bodyfat. Now, it’s slight, but that’s the self-sabotage talking and I should stay happy about this. And, in the same week, I’ve lost now >20 lbs, so my 4th 5lb loss. Also important is I have now personal records in many years on sticking with doing weights. I’ve never made it this far with this weight program, which I’ve had on tap since at least March 2017 (when my file for calculating weights to put on the barbell was made). So, that means this is the longest I’ve done weights in at least 3.3 years, likely longer (I stuck with weights longer than that before, I’d have to dig through my records to find it, though, and it was a different routine). I’ve also now, for three weeks, consistently been below my bf% for 2019–2020. Actually, this puts me into 2016 territory for bf%. All good things!
Looking Over the Week: Looking back over the week, especially at what I had hoped for this week, from last week’s summary, I’d say I accomplished everything except doing those core exercises! So, instead of self-sabotaging again, I continued to make progress this week, and I’m now fairly solidly at the point where I’ve erased 2018–2020’s worth of weight gain, and 2017–2020’s worth of fat gain. It looks like I had a low of 23.7% bf in 2016, so it’ll be a few weeks before I can get below that. I also had a minimum weight of 202.8 in 2017, so it’ll be several weeks before I get below that.
Looking Ahead 1 Week: Looking ahead, what can I say? I hope to continue to make progress! I’m still slightly ahead of my friend on the Apple Watch Challenge, so it’ll be close with our last day tomorrow, it’s anyone’s game. I won’t feel bad if I lose, since my goal was actually not specifically to win, but to do my now-normal thing and see what happens. It would be nice to get below 205 lbs, maybe even on average for the week, drop bf% more, and, of course, finally incorporate those core exercises, but after 15 weeks I’ll say it’s unlikely to go from zero to seven.
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