As a scientist who writes research papers, I’m used to long titles, so you’ll have to indulge me on the title for this one.
Over the last many months, roughly April thru July, I re-began my fitness journey and did pretty well on weight and fat loss, setting good habits with exercise, and striking a somewhat reasonable work-life balance. You can read over 100 posts about that on here.
In August, a sort of close colleague died. It triggered several weeks of minor/moderate depression, affecting my fitness, work, and personal life. That lasted well over a month.
Then, in October, I started working in earnest on a grant proposal, which was due at the end of October. I had another proposal due at the end of November. For both, I had committed myself to a very large amount of “pilot” work – meaning doing a small version of the work that I was proposing to do in order to demonstrate that I can do it and that my time estimates are reasonable. Towards the end of when this November proposal was due (November 20), I was getting about 5 hours of sleep a night and eating pre-packaged food because I didn’t have time to cook. And then we had Thanksgiving (US … as opposed to Canadian Thanksgiving back in October).
In the middle of that, I was surrounded to the north, west, and south by three wildfires which all set state or county records for size. At one point, I was 2–3 miles from each fire’s voluntary evacuation zone. It was fairly scary for a few weeks. We were making “bug-out” bags, list of priority for “if we get the evacuation alert, this is the order of operations” of stuff to bring, like packing up computers and valuables. Also, fire mitigation around the house, like moving loose brush, wood, and other flammable things.
So, after all of that in the last four months, what happened with my fitness? Um … not much. My weight, I guess fortunately, plateaued though has gone up slightly this Thanksgiving week. So, I didn’t really lose ground there, fairly steady at 20 lbs down since April. My bodyfat percentage has gone back up, though I’m kinda hoping it’s a bit of a spike again because of Thanksgiving, and I might have a big drop over the next week or two. I measured it at 26.0% on Saturday, which is way up from the low of 24.0% a few months ago. But, last time I was at 26.0%, I was 213 lbs, so that’s a fair amount of lean mass lost instead of fat.
What about diet? Well, other than the occasional small cheat, I actually have kept that fairly reasonable over the last few weeks, though working non-stop helps. I have wavered much more on a day-to-day basis, but I’ve managed to keep the weeks stable and within my goals.
Exercise …. well, that’s kinda embarrassing. I’ve done practically nothing since October started, though I finally got off my butt today and did a 5.07 km walk. But to do it, I drove down to the mailboxes and walked on the more flat road instead of walked up the hills I live on. I justified it by needing to reset things a bit, especially on my Apple Watch which has been doing some weird things lately like saying I climbed 12 flights of stairs in the middle of the night or when sitting, typing at my computer. Apparently, resetting the fitness calibration data can help with that (though it hasn’t), and Apple recommends you do an outdoor walk or run on relatively flat ground afterwards to let it calibrate to your movement. I also cleaned the exercise mats downstairs, ripped up the really old ones that were decomposing, ordered some new ones, and reset the weight equipment.
Anyway, that is my circuitous way of ‘splaining that I’m really, really hoping that I can get back to a regular fitness routine and duplicate my success of April thru July. While of course we all set specific goals, by specific dates, they need to be fluid. I’ve already moved mine back by a few months because of the Life (and Work) issues for the last, well, few months.
So … let the Journey continue.
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