One-Sentence Summary: Increasingly improving with setback recovery.
Food: I was pretty spot-on last week, but then with the stuff I “didn’t count,” I went up an average of 130 calories per day. This week, that was cut in half to 75 calories per day, so I’m certainly improving. I was actually going to be about 1% under (on stuff I counted), but ended up 1% over because I decided I probably had a bit of extra peanut butter and gummi bears during the week that I should average in. That said, my macros split was again spot-on with a 30/35/35 making it three weeks in a row that I’ve been in the green on all my macros. First time I can claim that since January 2021. Saturated fats and dietary cholesterol were also down this week, though sodium was a bit up. Still, pretty good on food, all things considered.
Exercise: A significant improvement over last week, where the total calories exceeded my baseline goal of 1875 expended from exercise (what I need to lose 0.5 lb of fat per week): I ended up hitting about 2500 calories. I was surprised to see that this is actually not something I do rarely, as I exceeded 2500 calories just six weeks ago when I was in Australia, and I exceeded that in March to 2670 calories primarily due to moving asphalt. I’d have to go back another year to exceed that, though, in March 2021 at 3224 calories in a week (weight lifting and a huge amount of walking, apparently). Anyway, I exceeded my goal there, and that’s what matters. I also met my goal of at least all four forms of cardio once (walk, elliptical, bike, row), met my goal of weight lifting three times, and I almost met my goal of ≥40 minutes of cardio ≥5 times. I also did two longer walks and got VO2 max measurements, both of which were significantly better than I’ve been for two years, so that was also a nice bonus on the week. Total steps is less then last week but that’s okay, I don’t really have a steps goal. I’m also legit back to a full-week streak on all my Watch rings, I more than double-qualified for the 7-workouts-week of ≥5 minutes, and I easily got my Watch Challenge for July of ≥15 workouts of ≥15 minutes. So, even though I still didn’t do core exercises this week, I’m pretty happy with how I did on exercise this week.
Sleep: This week was not as good as last week. I did okay with naps, staying below my limit, but then Friday’s sleep was way too little because I stayed up watching TV and still had to get up by a certain time to get to work for a meeting. Room for improvement on this one.
Measurements: I have some individual notes in the daily updates for Friday and Saturday, but on the surface, this week was decent. Well, I should say it was still quite good. I was down 1.0 lb on the average (goal is 1.6 at this point, but I still doing okay), and I lost my first 5 lbs (first of twelve). Why mark 5-lb increment? Because it’s easy to lose 5 lbs, but losing 60 lbs is daunting. Or, something like that. So, 5 lbs at a time. Bodyfat measurements were also down a bit, I’m very slightly ahead of my goal at this point (well within the uncertainty, though), so overall I am satisfied / happy with how this week went with measurements, which really kinda are the bottom-line to, “Is everything else working?”
Points: Points went up again this week to where I’m “in the blue.” (I re-did my color scheme for this go-round to be better for people who are colorblind and it’ll even work for black-and-white. And for those who might be new to this, “Points” are a way to, with just a single number, see at-a-glance how well I met my goals for the week with weigh-ins, measurements, food, exercise, and sleep. They range from –100 to +100.) The improvement in points from last week was due to being a bit better on food (at this point there’s not much room for improvement there for points) and significantly better on exercise. I also counted as core exercise my rower from today – which I’m “allowed” to do if I do ≥40 minutes of cardio that day via other methods – and I counted the groceries yesterday as “core” exercises, which is a bit more of a stretch. Still, from 25 in Week 1 to 44 in Week 2 to 65 in Week 3 is a pretty good progression. I’m significantly unlikely to continue that to Week 4 since I am getting a bit behind on work, but hopefully I’ll at least be close to 65 again.
Looking Over the Week: I again improved over last week, which is a good thing, and of course there is room for improvement. I did cheat a tiny bit on my Watch ring on Friday, doing a bit of “Mind & Body” “exercise” to fill out my Move Ring, but I feel like I made up for it today by going >50% over my goal and nearly 4x my Exercise Ring goal.
Looking Ahead One Week: No significant impediments expected to continued progress this coming week, though as I noted above, I am getting behind on some work stuff so need to be better with time and motivation and energy-level management. As with this past week, next week is going to be hot so I also want to get my sleep schedule back to where I’m getting up early when it’s cool enough to be outside without melting.
Looking Ahead More than One Week: I’m now at the point where some significant work stuff (I’m running a conference) is coming up in four weeks, and then I have some travel for a week after that. I’m concerned about losing momentum during that time, and sliding backwards, for that almost always happens. 🤞
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