I’ve had a lot of different foci (focuses?) these last seven weeks, where, for the first few, I was trying to make incremental improvements. For example:
- The week of January 09, I tried to focus on getting my sleep schedule more under control.
- The week of January 16, I tried getting meal planning more consistent.
- The week of January 23, I tried to get basic exercise going again.
- Throughout January, I tried to get work under more control, or balanced better.
Pretty much the only two things that I have changed and kept consistent, successfully, is the sleep schedule is mostly under control (still not getting up at the desired 7:30am, but certainly bedtime is more consistent), and – when able – getting out for brief walks every hour or two. The latter is one the bf and I are both trying to get on each other for doing more consistently, and the idea actually came from what my dad (aged 71) has been doing since retirement a year or two ago: Getting out for a walk every hour or so, though his goal is specifically >15k steps/day.
We’re not quite there since, well, we both work, but when the weather is at least slightly cooperative, we’re trying to at least get >30 minutes total per day. We started out by just, every hour, at about 5 or 10 ’til, we’d go walk up the driveway and back, which is around a 3–4 -minute walk, every daylight hour we were awake (so ≈8x). Being January and February, the ground isn’t entirely cooperative, and the weather is sometimes cold in Colorado, so I made the point that we were spending double the time of the walk due to putting on and taking off extra layers and shoes.
So, we started doing a bit longer walks, every ~90 minutes. Then it snowed. This last week, it only snowed about 4″ up here, but it was below freezing for 6 days straight. Meaning that the cars that did drive on the dirt road ended up compacting the snow into ice, which is a delight to walk on. Today was the first day above freezing, and combined with our low humidity and high sun, our first walk was on ice, and our fourth walk was on slushy mud. I’m hoping that tomorrow will be better, and with highs near 63°, it should almost be pleasant shorts weather.
So, since January 23, I’ve averaged 883 calories per week on walking, which is an improvement. The only downside to this sort of walking is that you don’t get a steady, extended cardio set going, so my calories burned per minute don’t go as high as if I were doing a single, extended walk. But, I’m doing it, and that’s what’s important at the moment.
While I’m talking about exercise, I’ve yet to hit the weights or core exercises yet, in eight weeks. And, with a trip next week (March 06–11), I don’t plan to do weights but I’m hoping to get back into core exercises or bodyweight exercises or something for ≈15 minutes in the evening. Moving on …
With weight, I was getting frustrated in January. My weight was going down slightly, but not nearly enough. That, of course, hurt my motivation, and I fell off the wagon again in February (more on that in a bit). I got down to an average of 224.2 lbs for a week, but I’ve gone back up. When I got dressed and weighed myself a few days ago and the scale said 230.0, that was yet another wake-up call.
The thing is, I didn’t worry too much about the weight because my bodyfat percentage was going down. I figured, “Fine, if the scale’s not moving, at least I am losing fat.” But I’m also not really sure how real that was, given that I was only doing some light cardio. With the weight thing, I also stopped taking measurements for two weeks … looking in the mirror this past week, I knew that my bf% had gone back up, and when I finally measured again today … yup.
What’s really embarrassing is that I don’t quite have pants (other than sweats or lounge) that fit anymore, and the stubbornness in me has refused to let me buy XXL pants at Costco. Which means that I have a mere 7 days to lost about 3″ off my waist or I’m going to have to buy new pants for this conference in a week, since I can’t really wear sweat pants there, and the only shorts that fit are my “running” shorts.
So then, how’s food been? Looking at my log, the best week this year was the first week of January 2–8. The following week was okay at 105% of my calorie goal, and the week of January 30 was 104% of my goal. The last three weeks were 112–118%, and I’m not quite sure I counted everything.
This week, as planned, I went down in my calorie goal to what it’s supposed to be if I’m 210±5 lbs instead of 220±5 lbs. This morning I was 227.7 lbs. It’s a 60-calorie difference, and you might legitimately ask, if I can’t stick to a higher goal, why would I stick to a lower goal? Fair question. I’m hoping that all these other motivators will help spur it forward. It’s not a huge change, just 2gms fat less on average and about 5.2gms carbs and protein less on average.
And, today, I kept meticulous track of things. And I also planned out what I think is a reasonable week of food that has enough open space to keep me on track. So, what I mean by that is at the moment, 85% of my calories are spoken for, but that’s 99% of my protein, with only 74% of my fat and 79% of my carbs spoken for. There is a large gap on Tuesday for dinner due to a going-away party for a co-worker, but I’m hoping – seriously – that I’ll be able to show reasonable restraint. Maybe by eating just before it?
Oh, something else I’ve worked on is that today I finally put all my meals and all my snacks into two ternary diagrams, graphing fraction of macros in protein, carbs, and fats. Although, I just realized I forgot to scale fat by 9/4. Okay, done that now …
For those who are unfamiliar, a ternary diagram lets you graph the relative fraction of three different things. It’s used a lot in chemistry when you want to show the relative abundances of dominant components of a material. Like, graphing weight-percentage of aluminum, titanium, and oxygen in something. Instead of a square – an x and y axis – you get a triangle, so you have three axes but it’s not a 3D graph. If a data point is all the way in a corner, then 100% of that datum is made of that corner’s component. So for tracing macros, since we have three components, it’s useful to see where stuff is. For instance, if I drank some oil, that would be 100% fat. If I had some egg whites, that’s almost 100% protein. Or cereal is almost 100% carbs. What I aim for in my meals is food that’s clustered closer to the protein corner. Or, if I’m planning meals for a week, I could dip into something that’s closer to the carb corner or fat corner, so long as I balance it more with other stuff near the protein corner.
So, that’s what my meals ternary diagram looks like. The circles are where things plot, it has some labels, and for some of the labels I used emoji that I know what it is and it’s easier to recognize than reading something. Like, pizza, or salad with tuna, or orange chicken. I haven’t actually used it yet in planning, primarily because I made it after I planned this week’s food. I expect that what I’ll mainly use it for is that I’ll kinda plan some meals, and when I see I need more protein and less carbs/fat, I’ll look at this and either replace something with it, or add from the protein corner. Same thing goes with snacks. So, for instance, Brisket is unlikely to be eaten much because nearly 60% of the calories are from fat, with about 30% protein and 10% carbs. (I tend to make it and latke just once a year, anyway.) But, I should consider doing my tequila-lime chicken more given that it’s about 85% protein, 10% fat, 5% carbs. Or, do my Korean fire chicken with less rice, since that moves it from close to the protein corner to half-way between carbs and protein.
So, after attempting to make a commitment to re-get-back-into-it eight weeks ago, where am I, now that we’re 15.9% through 2022? In an effort to think positively, let’s just do the positives:
- I have maintained my planning method for work to help better manage what I need to do, when. That doesn’t mean I get it all done, but planning and trying to balance things out is a non-trivial chunk of the battle for me.
- I have developed a new habit or push or motivation to get out and walk every hour or two, even for just 5–10 minutes, when the weather is above 45° and the ground is stable.
- I have gotten back into more meal planning so that I can try to balance things out more during the week, not getting to Saturday with basically the only thing left I “can” eat being 2 cups of egg whites.
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