One-Sentence Summary: Improvements continue, or at least continue to form good habits.
Food: It took four weeks, but I think I can finally, reasonably say that I did not cheat this week with respect to not counting things, though I did move stuff around once. Okay, maybe twice. And, I was pretty much well within my goals as opposed to just meeting them. Well, for fat and protein. Once the melon was figured out today (Saturday), I tipped slightly over that goal but still within my <+5% for it being okay on the week’s average. Low on fat this week, but given how much I have stored up in deposits around my body, I’m not concerned. With a net –4% of my goal on calories, I’m fairly happy with this week’s outcome. And, sodium and dietary cholesterol were at monthly lows, while saturated fat intake was also quite low.
Exercise: I’m reasonably happy with exercise this week, all-in-all. I did cardio 6 of 7 days, though three of those were for less than my target 40 minutes (including the issues yesterday). I did weights on my three goal days, though as usual, I did not do core exercises … except once. Once is more than zero, so that is an improvement. I did have one very low motivation day, Tuesday, where I didn’t do much of anything. And then I had the physical issues yesterday where I didn’t do much because I was dizzy and my head hurt. And, despite me setting out saying I wasn’t going to cheat on my Watch rings by lowering their goal and/or doing “Mind & Body” “exercise,” I did. Twice. My justification is that the surrounding days were good, this week was very good overall, and one day’s burnout in 23 (so far) plus one day’s physical issues in 23 (so far) is hardly worth being penalized. So, I cheated. Or, I bent the rules. And I still managed (without that) to surpass my baseline goal of ≥1875 cal/week burned through exercise. I didn’t get as high as last week’s 2500 cal, but 1970 cal is still pretty good, and it’s certainly a marked improvement over a month ago. I also got in all forms of cardio this week at least once (walk, bike, elliptical, row).
Sleep: Reasonable week on sleep, though I’ve been tired this weekend for some reason. Probably because I stayed up too late the night before and it took me awhile to fall asleep (Friday) and then the headache stuff (Saturday).
Measurements: The easy metric is that this was a good week for bodyfat percentage, where I am down and ahead of my goal. Though it is well within the noise still and I think I might’ve been sucking it in a bit when measuring my stomach. But, I was also down overall on weight, which is good. Though weight this week was a bit weird and had a huge range of 2.5 lbs, putting it on par with the first week. This was the first week where my weight fluctuated to above the previous week’s average, which was disappointing. That was the weigh-in the day after I didn’t do any exercise, so I suspected it would happen, but it was still disappointing to see. I tried hard the next two days and the weight plummeted. While I thought Friday’s weigh-in was cheating a bit (I’d been up for 3 hrs and had biked and sweat for 45 minutes), the same measurement Saturday morning for weight was nice to see. That said, I’m growing more behind in my average weekly weight vs my goal weight. Last week, the difference was +0.4 lbs, this week it’s +0.8 lbs. However, if I do a –0.725% of my weight per week from my initial high on June 26, and project out what the weight should be every day, I’m below (ahead of) that goal. If I change it to –0.800%, I’m exactly at my goal. The issue is the averages. So, we’ll see what happens. I’m not concerned yet, but I may have to adjust my goal. And let’s face it: Losing a little over 1 lb per week isn’t bad, it’s great. It’s just not as aggressive as I’d hoped. And, it’s hard to make a meaningful trend from four weeks with something like this. [Edit: Actually, I’m going to go ahead and modify the goal to be –0.700% of my weight per week, which moves my goal out an extra week, to be more realistic based on how I’ve been going.]
Points: Points were slightly up this week, which is what I had hoped for last week. The +2 compared with last week is due to slightly better eating habits and getting ≥8 hrs in bed each night. The biggest area of potential improvement is those core exercises, which is the story of this blog for two years running. Doing better on cardio would also help.
Work-Life Balance: Sucked. I hardly worked this week, and as I noted in the last week in review, that’s getting to be a problem.
Looking Over the Week: Despite two days of setbacks, this week was a good week, all things considered with staying on-track with (most) things, getting exercise in, and metrics moving in the correct direction.
Looking Ahead One Week: The week is forecast to be cooler, so hopefully I can walk more than use the elliptical and rower, and maybe bike more than once. But, I really need to get to focusing more with work again because I’m falling way behind.
Looking Ahead More than One Week: Getting to be crunch time on this conference I’m running in 1.5 weeks. And, immediately after that conference, I’m going Back East for 9 days to visit the bf’s mom and then my parents for their 50th wedding anniversary. Back here for just under two weeks, then away for a work trip for five days. Travel tends to kill things for me, and as a test of my resolve to keep up on fitness, it usually shows that I fail. So, we’ll see.
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