Right-o. Been a bit of time, and I’ve been busy.
After the Capitol insurrection, I was really having some motivation issues, but I managed to plug through it, counting down the days until January 20. For the 20th, I made a new dish (for me) to celebrate: “Sandy’s After-Dinner Mint Surprise Alaska Tartlets.” Or, more basically, a baked alaska in a tart. This was a chocolate tart shell, with a chocolate custard filling, with mint chocolate chip ice cream, surrounded in an Italian meringue shell that was lightly torched (hence the “baked Alaska” idea). Each one had 1400 calories, practically my entire daily allowance, so they were eaten in pieces over several days.
There was also some euphoria after the inauguration, so I had some further focusing issues, and now I have a large grant proposal due on Friday. But, with this proposal in, I’m done for this writing season and shouldn’t need to submit anything else until July at the earliest, except maybe an internal one to my work location, but I won’t be in charge of that one.
So, how have I been doing on food? I’ve managed to make one new dish (be it dessert or dinner) a week: Blueberry Boy Bait (it’s a real dish, I didn’t make it up to seem extra-gay), Lemon-Yogurt Anything Cake, Baked Alaska Tartlet, Cinnamon-Sugar Scone. I’ve also managed to fit each one into my food plan without going over, and I’ve been much better about cheating on food. ‘Cause, really, more than half of fat loss is done in the kitchen by PUTTING DOWN THE FORK!!!!
The way I’ve been dealing with food this week is that most meals I’m making are extremely low in carbs, like 10–35 gms each, so I have had dumplings in the middle of the day as my snack, and I was still only around 80% of my carbs allotment. So, when I made the scones, I took the dumplings out and put in the scones. And took out almonds for the fat in the scones (basically 1 tablespoon of butter in each one). So, I’m still on track to end the week at 95% of my carbs, 97% of fat, and 105% of protein. But, the week still has 3 more days to it.
Exercise … I am slowly getting back to this. Last time, I prioritized getting into a routine with cardio rather than getting into a routine with weight lifting. From what I’ve read, it’s actually more important for weight loss to lift weights, unless your concern is using cardio for a caloric deficit (which I am …). But, from what I’ve seen and read over the last ~8 months, if you’re doing two of three things – diet, strength training, cardio – do the first two. So, I’ve gone from one weight session a week to two last week and I’ve already done two this week so am on track to get three in (which was always the goal, weights 3×/week). So, maybe next week I’ll be able to work on cardio? I’m still trying to take advantage of work meetings to do exercise, but it’s so easy to just sit and veg during those meetings.
I’m also slowly – perhaps too slowly, but the point is to do the exercise in the first place – working my way back up in weight for these exercises. DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) is thankfully a thing of the past again, so that’s not an issue, so my unofficial goal is to kinda go up in weight on one exercise each time I work out to try to get back to where I left off. I don’t have a specific reason to really push myself with weights right now because its purpose is to keep lean mass there and help with weight loss rather than to really gain muscle, but still, it’d be nice to get back up to what I was doing:
- Squats: 185 lb now, 235 lb before
- Benchpress: 115 lb now, 155 lb before
- Row: 115 lb now, 145 lb before
- Press: 70 lb now, 90 lb before
- Deadlift: 135 lb now, 175 lb before (I despise these so might not go up)
- Biceps Curls: 60 lb now, 80 lb before (sort of)
- Calf Raises: 135 lb now, 140 lb before (very close to old weight here, I have good calves)
Let’s see … what else is there? Oh, sleep. I’ve been really bad with sleep the last few weeks. I haven’t gone to bed before midnight since December, and for a few days over the past few weeks I was getting less than 6 hours of sleep, and napping. That’s not conducive to anything good, be it working on a regular schedule, working out on a regular schedule, eating regularly, etc. Trying to force myself back into something regular now, but it seems like whenever I’m finally ready to go to bed early, the bf isn’t, while when he is, I’m not. Sigh.
So, what about results? Things are pretty stagnant right now. Weight is around 212 – still 15 lbs below my high in 2020 – but 10 lbs above my low in 2020, and my waist line and bodyfat are back up. Not feeling good about that, but it seems like my feeling bad about that has not been overcoming my desire to cheat sometimes and not work out sometimes. I’m really not quite sure what’s going on in my head, there.
My Fitness Blog 