Hmmmm…. I should be doing better at daily updates, not combining two. Anyway …
Anyway, other than the VO2 max which is tanking, it’s been a fairly good two days. Overall, I’m still doing the lower calories per day goal this week to try to get past this plateau, and I can tell you it seems to be working: I’m down to 219.4 lbs this morning, whereas the plateau was hovering between about 221.5 and 222.5 lbs for about two weeks. Fingers crossed.
Yesterday with food, I did reasonably well, though I do suspect I under-counted the cherries I ate in the evening. Today would’ve been okay on carbs, but I peeled two pears and then realized the Korean Braised Beef dish only gets one, so I split it with the bf and those 16 grams put me way over my limit. The chocolate didn’t help, either. I’m okay with that because technically I’m still under my 1740cal goal, the 1570 is a “soft” goal this week to push through this plateau. And, I should still be good on the week. I lowered the amount of rice in the fried rice to help make up for it and I didn’t even notice it seemed to have less. I’ll probably lower it more. (I should also write down my other adaptations of the recipe.)
With respect to sleep, I’m doing better, barely napping, and tending to get my 8+ hrs each night. So, I’m also more productive (no nap to interrupt and take time from the day), and I’ve gotten a fair bit of work done this week, which is a welcome change from the previous several.
For exercise, yesterday was “okay.” The bf asked for dinner early so we could walk while it was light out, and then he proceeded to be super slow. I normally make the top of The Hill in around 12 minutes; he took 16. So, I walked more slowly than usual, meaning my heart rate was lower than usual, meaning I got fewer calories out of a 54-minute walk than the previous day that was the same length walk in 45 minutes. Sigh. I also have been again putting off doing weights this week, so I did them this morning along with the rower as a warm-up, and I went up slightly in weights again. I’d go up more quickly, but I’m going to be on travel and I don’t want to slip after just going up, so I’m proceeding slowly for now. That’s my excuse, anyway. The very long walk this evening (6.36 km, finally broke through the 10 with an average pace was 9.99 min/km) was while the boyfriend was doing his swimming. And, it was just 420 calories. Apparently, if I walk on a mostly flat path, even if I’m sweating like a stuck pig because it’s hot and humid, I still only burn about 6.5 cal/min. As opposed to walking up here at the house on these hills, I’m closer to 8.5–9.5 cal/min. Much more efficient use of time.
I think my VO2 max is going down because Watch does not factor in elevation. So, it was around 31, and it was going up steadily while I was in Australia to about 32. Got back to the US and two weeks later it jumped to 34.7. Now it’s been slowly going down (though more quickly in the last few days) despite me doing more exercise, so it must have some sort of adaptive averaging or something where it’s reverting back to “you suck.”
When I get a new Watch this autumn, we’ll see if I get a different reading (this one still has some outages on heart rate when I walk, and that’s a critical part of the calculation). I’ve also been sort-of-seriously-considering getting a Garmin Watch and wearing that, too, to get a second opinion. I originally had a Garmin Forerunner 920, from about 2012ish ’til I got my Watch in 2018. It did not have an optical heart rate sensor, so I had to wear a strap which meant I didn’t use it very much for heart rate and thus the required data for VO2 max. But, now that they are optical, I’ve been considering it. But I also don’t want to spend $900 just to get a second opinion (I would get the fēnix 7 sapphire solar since that has the multiple GPS frequencies and is, well, solar, which is just awesome).
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