The Most Loathed

Having had some grandparents with diabetes and been very overweight most of my life, this is one of those I've had on my radar. So, I feel you. Fortunately, this community is the best one I know for helping you make the necessary changess.

 

I was looking for my own coffee drinking GIF and this silliness make me laugh, almost spitting out my actual coffee.

Monday

 

Training

BJJ

More leglocks from honey hole. This time we were focusing on a case where the person is a little savvy and getting away.

Single Leg X to Traditional X then sweep to the ground. Roll over the leg you have and set up your Honey Hole position. Fall on the leg you're attacking with your upper body and go for the heel hook but they try to pull their leg away. You can trap their toes in your elbow and still get the hook. If they try to kick out to spin through the foo rotates in your grip to have the heel up and toes down. Shift your figure four lock to really lock down the knee and you end up doing a funky Aoki Lock by trapping the sole of the foot in your armpit, cross both of your arms and hug them against your chest then side bend for the break. There is one more heel hook variant if they spin even beyond this but I wasn't able to nail it down well enough to write it out.

 

Rolls

Bradley (white) - Bradley was my partner for instruction so we rolled. He was in his Marine-Try-Hard mode and I didn't really feel like going hard for the submission so I just harassed him by spamming attacks. I could tell he was wary of my strangles so I would mount, get and arm up then take his back, start hunting different attacks but couldn't land those, so I'd move back to mount. When it was over he said he counted it as a win since I didn't strangle him for once. Ok by me. 

One More - There as a middle roll here but I'm not calling it up in my memory

Alex (blue) - Alex and I started up as we usually do but about halfway through the round he kind of paused us and said "I think that if you went for a leglock here you might have it instead of having our same fight". I really appreciated it and took his advice. The next time I was about to body lock pass I fell back on an ankle lock and got it. So, thanks to Alex on that cue.

 

Food

I was super comfortable in terms of how much food I ate and when. It felt really good. I also finished the VanLeewan's pint so Wednesday I'll probably crack open my new pint and post about it. 

 

Sleep

I did not have good sleep Sunday into Monday. This is the case where my Whoop Strap and my Withings Sleep Mat seem to tell the most different story. In knowing a bit about what I'm looking for, I can see it in the Withings data if I look. I had a couple G&Ts Sunday night with dinner and they hit me unexpectedly hard, at least in terms of my sleep. I woke up a bunch of times and my head was kind of fuzzy and uncomfortable when I did. In the Withings data this shows up as a more choppy sleep pattern, rather than 90 minutes of deep sleep then 30 minutes of light sleep or even waking up a bit, it much shorter cycles. My resting heart rate is a full 10 BPM over normal for me and my Whoop recorded that my respiration was high too. Basically, my body was acting like it was dealing with physical stress all night so I didn't get a good night's sleep.

 

Recovery

 

I covered most of it in the sleep section but my recovery was very low. 

I did no additional recovery work (stretching or yoga)

 

Guitar

I did no Grease the Groovy sessions. I'm not having much success here and may park that idea

I did have a really nice 45 minute structured practice. I'm looking forward to my Wednesday lesson to check in on a few things.

 

Games

No games to report here but I added this section this challenge because I'd like to get a couple good board game sessions in this challenge, as opposed to the 0 sessions last challenge. I've also been trying to deliberately play some video games a bit more. So I'll log it for a bit and we'll see. 

The Hibernation Project is in effect

The next couple months are about rest and maintenance. I'm going to survive the holidays and the cold winter of the north by turning down the intensity, turning up the recovery and getting ready to get some stuff done in the new year.

 

Anyone who's read me, the format will be pretty much the same: complain, complain, bikini shots, complain..oh wait, that's my instagram. I'll continue logging the same things but trying to keep the focus on physical efforts a bit dialed back and use these months to continue to work on my sleep and recovery.

 

Calendar

• Week 0 (October 16 - 22) - Strength deload/reset (brining back dumbbells), In-Laws visiting over the weekend
• Week 1 (October 23 - 29) - normal
• Week 2 (October 30 - Nov 5) - normal
• Week 3 (November 6 - 12) - normal
• Week 4 (November 13 - 19) - Likely parent visit
• Week 5 (November 20 - 26) - normal

As you can see, I have an uneventful calendar coming up, which is lovely be me

 

Standard Week

• Monday - BJJ
• Tuesday - Strength + BJJ (hardest day of my week)
• Wednesday - BJJ
• Thursday - Strength (easiest day of my week)
• Friday - BJJ
• Saturday - Strength (most commonly missed workout of the week due to errands, family visits, etc)
• Sunday - BJJ (2 hour open mat)

 

Standard Week Day

• 0530 - 0600 wake up and make coffee
• 0600 - 0730 begin work
• 0730 - 0800 breakfast
• 0800 - 1000 work
• 1000 - 1300 training & lunch
• 1300 - 1530 work
• 1530 - 1600 afternoon meal
• 1600 - 1700 work
• 1700 - 1800 guitar 
• 1800 - 1900 dinner prep
• 1900 - 2000 dinner 
• 2000 -2100 clean up
• 2100 - 2200 in bed relaxing
• 2200 - lights out

Starting about 5 pm theres more wiggle room than the schedule above implies but I was just trying to set out a basic template. I never get a full hour of guitar practice there but sometimes work runs over, other times dinner prep will take a little longer so I start earlier. The biggest takeaways are that I train midday which is a great feature of my work-life balance and that, as a result, my workday is split in two big chunks. Also, I like to got to bed early but I also get up pretty early.

 

Areas of focus during this challenge

• BJJ - I've focused pretty hard on this over the summer so I'm back off this focus. I'm still training 5 days a week but I'm being more playful and seeing what emerges. I'm taking chances in rolls to get out of my comfort zone. I'll keep working on escaping pins and I'll take some shots at leg locks
• Strength- I had an injury over the summer that I'm still shaking off so I'm sticking to dumbbells and machines only. I'm aiming for hypertrophy more than strength gain. I'm in my mid forties and don't have  much opportunity to gain muscle left in my life. 
• Diet - After losing 30 lbs over the summer my goal is to hang around 215ish through the new year before I make another big push in January & February. I and people around me are still adjusting to my bodyweight. 
• Sleep - I have had very bad sleep habits in the past. I continue to work on them. I was able to make some improvements in the last challenge so I'm going to keep pushing on this
• Mobility - It's been a long running challenge for me to get some basic stretched and/or yoga. I fully realize those are not synonymous but for now, I'll take either. If you look at the schedule above, there's no room for it. This remains a challenge for me. 
• Guitar - I've been practicing for years and been pretty meh about it. I'm trying to build a better habit. The biggest thing I am seeking in guitar right now is finding an intrinsic drive to play more. I have played out of discipline and block headedness so far but I want to learn to want to pick up the instrument. 
• Games - This is new this challenge but I've been dabbling in it. I'd like to intentionally spend a little more time gaming, board or video. 

 

Enough setup

September 11 - 219.9

September 18 - 220.7

September 25 - 218.0

October 2 - 216.0

October 9 - 215.4

October 16 - 213.8

 

I was really surprised by today's weigh in. I've been really stable between 215.0 and 216.5. I think it's probably just because I ate less bulky food yesterday and maybe got a little dehydrated. I'll keep an eye on it and bump my calories up if I don't rebound to 215. 

I have have family coming to visit this weekend so no idea what to expect for my weigh in next week. 

 

Welcome Back!

Glad to hear that your mom is doing better and you can put the caregiver side of you on a shelf for a bit and focus on yourself. Your timing is great as we should be ticking over to a new six week challenge tomorrow. So please join us in the challenge forums and start a log and hang out with some nerds. 

On 10/13/2023 at 12:39 PM, Kishi said:

Yeah, man, I'm kind of there myself. Once you've done the work of building the life you want to lead, the rest is just minor tweaks and adjustments. Although, never underestimate these. Little things get big over time, and you never know how much time it'll be.

You are 100% right. lot misses, hundreds or thousands of times undo hard work.

 

On 10/13/2023 at 1:56 PM, Snarkyfishguts said:

That ice cream looks really good. Are you thinking about the next flavor or are you

lore of a spontaneous ice cream selector? 

More VanLeewen was my fall back but I was looking forward to browsing. I picked up a brand I have never bought before. I'm over on my calories for the day so I won't try it today but I'll update when I've eaten some. 

Twin Cities actually has a really good Ice Cream scene so I may make it a bit of a fun project over the next year to see how many local brands I can pick up in their own local stores. 

 

Friday

Training

BJJ

More Leg Locks

We were working leg lock entries from traditional X. The idea was to take them down from X then rotate over their leg, passing a kneebar and toe hold on the way but land perpendicular in Honey Hole

(Honey Hole, guy on the left is in control, guy on the right needs to get out of their or he'll get something damages on his right leg)

 

I have heard of the position before but never known how to enter and now I need to learn a lot more about it. From this position we were setting up a heel hook on the leg we had exposed. 

 

Rolls

Ken (blue) - We had a good back and forth. I forget what submission I hit him with. After we reset I was screwing around a bit and let him get a really good triangle set up on me and had to tap. Happy day for him, he's been trying to get that for a while. 

Carter (white) - He put up a great fight. I got a submission with seconds to go but he managed to escape two solid attempts before those. During one triangle I heard him stop breathing but he had one last big kick in him to get free so I had to keep chasing. 

Pat (blue) - Pat's a lot smaller than me so I tried to keep my weight off of him and we just had a fun roll. I hit a couple submissions but it was light an easy.

 

After Class

I hung around with Tim long enough that we were asked to lock up and Stan just left. We were working on leg locks. Tim's been studying them longer than me and has hit some good insights I haven't had yet. The big one was that all leg lock escapes come from the other leg. In the picture above of Honey Hole. notice that the guy in his blue shirt has his legs stopping the grey shirt guy from being able to move. If he wasn't doing that the grey shirt guy can use his leg to spin out of danger.  A lot to work on here. 

 

Food

Yesterday was our chef box. I was planning to over eat because it was Date Night Dining. We had a really good Beef Bourguignon. We also had roasted a roasted pear with ginger cream. We chose to save the appetizer menu for tonight, spreading our chef box out over two days.,

Sleep

Our dog hopped in bed overnight and get between us. Every couple of hours she'd try to push us apart by locking our her legs and driving us away. So we each woke up briefly as she did that but it didn't keep me awake.

Mobility

None

Guitar

Basic practice ~20-30 minutes

 

2 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

And in the grand scheme of bad relatives, they aren’t awful. they’re like a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1-10. Incredibly self-centered, thoughtless, lazy, and drama-seeking. Sometimes mean, homophobic, and/or racist.

Oh. I've got some of these. This is why I live 4 hours away from them and see them about 4 times per year. Sharing a city with them would be too much for me. 

16 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

Ice cream is a great solution!!!

I find I can only eat about 50 grams before I'm sated, which is great but it means a pint lasts a bit. I've got about one more serving of this before I have to move on to something else. 

 

Thursday

Training

Rec Time

• Strength Trainings - machines only
• Elliptical - 30 minutes
• Stretching - 5 minutes

 

I set out to do my stretching and mobility and set a timer because I wanted to make sure I stopped at 15 minutes and I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to do in those 15 minutes. I did my things and thought "that went pretty fast, I'll just make sure I'm between 10 and 15 minutes". 4 minutes. I had been doing it for 4 minutes. I screwed around a bit more and called it good enough at five. 

 

Food

 

Ate some more ice cream. I thought I had my calories dialed in but I was trying a new recipe for supper and it sucked. I was really disappointed. I think there are some pieces I'll take from it but there are some mistakes I won't remake. So I ate less for supper than planned so I wrapped up with ice cream.

 

Also, I've been feeling hunger the last couple of days but landing the calories. My weight has been really stable so I'm just monitoring.

 

The failed recipe was a New York Times one, it was this one sheet pan recipe for yogurt chicken where you cook a bunch of onions and tomatoes on the pan as well. I realized when I went in to flip the chicken we were going to have a problem. Onions and tomatoes have a ton of water in them and it was still bubbling out and cooking off. The chicken was basically getting steam cooked. So it was cooking faster and looked really unattractive. Sure enough, the yogurt added nothing (white people seasoning is the work, serious, just oregano and salt?!), the chicken was overcooked but bland, the tomatoes and onions were delicious. In future I may borrow from this and just do a better marinade on the chicken and grill it while I do a big sheet pan of tomatoes and onions. Throw it all together in a pita for a nice Chicken Slovakia type prep.

Sleep

A pretty good night's sleep for me. I still find it weird that my sensor thinks I'm sleeping while I read. I tried starting a new book last night but realized it was not for me. Glad it was just a random grab at the library. It'll go back. I guess it's time for more Rivers of London.

 

Guitar

I got in 30 minutes of sructured practice after work and one five minute Grease the Groovy session while I was waiting on a query to run.

 

Mobility

I did five minutes at the rec. Probably should have done 5 more later in the day. I haven't had any back pain this week but I can occasionally feel warnings from my body so I'm still being careful with it. 

 

Other

Well, I guess this challenge is over this weekend. I feel like I never even got it kicked off properly.

 

My plan for this next challenge, and probably the one after that is to stick to the rest and recovery plan. I know I basically do the same thing every challenge but I'd say that most of what I do is what I want to be doing with minor adjustments. I've been in the place of trying to start a new habit or take on a scary new challenge years in the past but over the course of that time I've managed to launch most of the projects I wanted to launch and I spend my time now just tuning those. I realize that to add something else I have to lose something. If I wanted to start running or play 8 hours of video games a week, or watch lots of movies, or whatever, I'd need to kill something, either train half as much, or not do guitar, or something. I'm pretty content with the basic structure I have. 

So, I'm going to keep doing my little course adjustments. I'm going to continue to work on my sleep, maintain my weight, teach myself to pick up the guitar more often and look for something intrinsic I like about it. 

On 10/7/2023 at 6:30 PM, Scaly Freak said:

 

Well. That explains why Black Panther is one of the least profitable and least talked-about movies in all of the MCU. Too woke and too many black actors. That all makes sense now. 🙄

I've heard this kind of thing before about Black Panther, I think it's a common story in the zeitgeist but, as far as I can tell, it's just not true. (business insider, wikpedia ). There is a real problem of studios tanking a movie's performance because it's not white and male enough but Black Panther was a pretty big exception. I recall when it came out that people were genuinely surprised at how well it did. 

 

Also, movie studio profits are entirely a fiction anyway.

Quote

Reference

 

On 10/7/2023 at 7:44 AM, Snarkyfishguts said:

Some people are assholes, and I can't make that better for anyone.

So much packed up in this and so much energy we all spend on these sentences. It's weird how even knowing this academically some people can just bleed you. I don't think the phrase Energy Vampires is used much anymore but I still think it's apt. Family is doubly difficult since most of us are taught that you stick with family no matter what, we often live close to them, and they end up being our support network. 

Pulling for you.

3 hours ago, Kishi said:

I don't speak up much here, but I'm always glad to hear from you whenever we get to.

I hear you. I'm the same way. I drop in on other people's threads and I'm not prone to just injecting myself into a conversation and try to not assume they need to hear my rationale for something in their thread but then it means I read and leave without saying anything. I struggle to find that happy medium.

 

 

Wednesday

Training

BJJ

Leg Locks - heel hooks

Not a ton to say about the heel hook itself. It scares everyone because you can hurt your partner but they are a necessary part of the game. We were entering from Traditional X, which I personally use a lot more than single leg X so I need to work on this.

This lands you more perpendicular to your partner than single X but you can feed that leg he has on his should across to your arm pit for some heel hooks. You can also spin over it (after you sweep them) for a kneebar or toe hold. If those fail you can keep spinning to the outside of the partner and set up heel hooks outside. We did a belly down and belly up version. The biggest thing I'm noticing is the principles I got from the Ankle Lock series I bought are paying off here as well. Breaking mechanics are super different but the principles of isolating the joint that your want to attack by locking down the nearest join on either side is key and when my partner doesn't do it I can relieve the pressure by knowing which extra joint can move. I don't push it and risk injury but I am learning a lot through the experience

 

Rolls

Shane (blue) - He started with me in X and, if I recall correctly, I passed from his X guard. I don't recall the submission but I submitted him and we reset. I know this part for sure because Professor is trying to get me better from bottom side control so he told us to not to the assigned drill but put Shane on top in side. I immediately swept so he reset up and gave Shane more instructions I had to work harder but eventually got the Choi Bar that I have been drilling. 

 

Josh (white) - I just immediately put Josh in top side, he had been doing the white belt curriculum that was working submissions from here anyway. I hooked his leg and swept him then submitted him with a Kimura. We reset with him in closed guard but something was wrong. I pulled back a bit and asked him if he was ok. He said he was but he was fighting with claustrophobia today. This is a thing that gets us all at white belt at times. You get some guy who is bigger than you and seems to just know everything you're going to do and he's on top of you, your brain freaks out. You realized you could actually get very badly hurt and you can't stop it. I've had this experience. So we took a minute to talk then I put him back on top. I eventually swept him but didn't get on top and I verbally checked in with him and he indicated that he was fine. So I submitted him, but nicely. We went again with him on top. This time I took his back but kept him over me so all the pressure was on me. Time expired here. 

 

After Class

I talked with Josh a bit more. He didn't understand how I could just get out from under him but he couldn't get out from under me. We went over some basic escape principles. It didn't address our specific roll but it'll help in general. Then I worked with Stan on his Black Belt promotion demo.

 

Other

There is a belt grad at the end of the month and the list of promotions was sent out a couple weeks ago and it was super short. Stan was saying anyone who got promoted last time isn't getting promoted this time. I was fine with this. My training partner, Ken, was upset. He hasn't not gotten a promotion at any given grad yet. He wanted to push back. Personally, I'd like to slow down the promotions. Let me be a blue belt for a bit. Some people spend years at this belt. 

Well, a new list came out yesterday and we're both getting bumped up. There were a lot of errors on the list but Ken is one stripe ahead of me so he should be going purple and that's what the list said. I'm 3 stripe so I should be going 4. I did see a handwritten note next to my name on a paper copy of the list that I wasn't supposed to see that said purple belt. I really do not want them to skip me up to purple. I want at least three more months at blue. Right now I would feel like a fraud at purple especially walking into Akogi where it's clear to me that at least half of the purples can beat me most of the time. I'm assuming it was one of the coaches making a suggestion and that I will just get the standard piece of tape this time. Then I can rub it in Ken's face that a blue belt is beating up a purple belt. My hope is that by the time I actually go purple I won't just be a threat to our brown belts but will be genuinely tapping them. That is not the case today. 

 

Other Other

I need to figure out if the is a way to pull out all of my jiujitsu sessions and compare them. I think I have found that when we are working leg locks I burn as many as 200 fewer calories in class.

 

 

Food

I'm still a bit at odds with myself on trying to actually hit or just exceed my calories for the day. My solution has been to leave a little too much for supper and then have a little ice cream after supper. I overplanned for supper so I still had a little left so I downed some cottage cheese just before bed, which is something I find that I like.  I find that this causes my morning weight to be a tad higher, when I push more food to the end of the day which seems to just be an artifact of having the material in my body. Weird to think of it that way but it's try.  That said, my average for the week is 215.5 so I'm in a good place and happy to stay there. 
 

Sleep

Tuesday into Wednesday sleep is always bad and this was no exception. Hard rolling until 7:30  means my heart rate is high when I go to bed. I'm putting my Whoop HR data in the spoiler box just to look at but since you can't interact with it like I can it's probably hard to get much info. The key detail is the Tuesday into Wednesday you can see a downward trend all night long. This is because I'm going to be with my heart rate at or a bit over 70 BPM. It seems to get down to about 60 or a bit below by morning. On a normal night I got to bed at somewhere between 50 and 60 and I wake up closer to 50, usually dipping to or just below 50 overnight.

 

 

Guitar

I got in a nice 30 minute, structured practice. The first half I just worked on Chitlins Con Carne, try to make sure I could land a weird F in pace with the other two chords. I need to start putting it to a drum or metronome over the weekend. Then I worked on Minor Pentatonic Shape 1 a bunch.

Mobility

No

 

Congratulations!

 

I'd strongly suggest going to a well regarded running store and having someone help you. Those people spend all day with shoes and spend a lot of time trying to get to them right. They're probably more helpful than each of us saying what our favorite shoe is. Get the shoes on and truly walk around the store for 5 minutes with each pair. Whatever pair you buy, be ready to swap them out in a few months. Don't treat them as too precious. Beat them up and know they'll break down and then it's time to move on. When I used to walk around a hospital daily I'd buy new shoes at least every six months. 

 

Stuff to think about is how much heel drop you want (difference between toe and heel height), ankle support (high tops / light hikers vs most walking shoes), sole flexibility, stuff like that. Personally I wear minimalist shoes but since it sounds like this is new to you I'd stay away from those for now. They can beat up your shins and arches if you aren't used to them. 

Hoka shoes are super popular right now and have lots of padding but little ankle support. They may be too garish for your use case. 

I wore Nike ACGs when I walked for work. They come in some nice leather looks that can pass for business casual but take a beating

Solomons are a step up from Nike in quality but step down in professionalism.

 

Those or my handful of suggestions but, to reiterate, spending time with the shoes on your feet is best. 

Monday

Training

BJJ

Instruction - ankle locks, some more

The topic was more on ankle locks. We started in single leg X and got the sweep then set up a straight ankle lock but let them get their foot partially out. With just the toes captured by our upper arm we could still finish the lock  but it was a twisting lock which means, in competition it's a heel hook and not legal in gi for most orgs.

We also did a version from 50:50 but I'm, not sure it's different enough that I can record a meaningful thing here other than "start in 50 50" and hope you win the race.

 

Rolling

I don't recall all my partners. I started with Ben (Blue) and we had to start in 50 50 which mean that we just got stuck there. Since we're both in the same leg entanglement with the other person and because of how the legs interlock you can't stand up with out backing away. He was trying to keep me in close but didn't have the skills to finish it so I was just stuck with him. 

Food

I was deliberately pushing myself to go as little over my allowance for the day. I knew that Sunday was under and Tuesday would be under and while I have a big meal coming on Friday, I'm trying to end up a little net positive on the week. Since I'm trying to stabilize and underate enough to lose a pound last week. I think I need to try and deliberately and consciously overeat but just by a little. 

Sleep

Sleep went well. I was starting the think I had solved some things. However, that always means something has to let me know I haven't

Guitar

I got in a one Greasing the Groovy but a regular practice session did happen.

Mobility

None

Tuesday

Training

Rec Time

I went to the rec and did a nice full body, with machines workout that I'm doing right now. I took plenty of time for stratching and mobility at the end and I even passed on cardio today, which I think is the right choice. 

 

 

BJJ

Marathon Roll

Before Class

Professor wanted me to work on keeping my hands inside on halfguard. I'm shooting my underhook too early and it's getting me flattened with some people. So I'm trying to rewire and instinct. I'm a little frustrated by not having a clear idea of when it is time to go for the under hook but I'm working with it. 

 

Class

No rolls from last night really jump out at me. I mean, it was a decent marathon sessions. JD (brown) was the only person to submit me. I took away a lot of submissions. I missed some too. I was hitting an awful lot of kimuras from bottom half that I wasn't finishing but a lot of that was deliberate. I was just playing with them to see what I could get. I still don't quite have it figured out when I'm going to finish that submission versus give up a lot of position for nothing.

 

After Class

I worked with Dan (brown) on some halfguard drilling and just looking at positions. Then a purple belt who doesn't like to play half guard came over and decided to wax poetic on his half guard philosophy and waste our time. 

 

Food

I ate a lot but it wasn't enough to offset my work for the day, which I expected. I can let myself go over by a little bit each day for the rest of the week but I will be making a bunch up on Friday night when we get our chef meal delivered.

Sleep

Remember how I said I thought I was getting things sorted a bit on sleep. Monday into Tuesday did not feel like it. I got into bed, comfy and happy to be done for the day. I didn't even feel like reading so I just closed my eyes and laid there while Laura read. But I noticed my brain was still pretty alert. I wasn't thinking about anything, just in too high of a gear to go to sleep. Eventually I put on an audiobook and was able to fall asleep but I don't think I get as good of a night of sleep total when I have a headphone in. As a result, per both of my devices, I got very little REM and less deep sleep that normal. I woke up early and almost gave up and got up at 4 am but was able to get a bit more sleep.

 

Guitar

One greasing the groovey

Mobility

I did a really nice 15 minute session at the rec

 

 

And now I need to go prep for teaching my team python today. I feel unhappy with the amount of logging I've done here over the past couple weeks so I'm going to try and put in a little more time here. 

What @Strickland5 says is solid. Where you're at, doing each moderately is perfectly fine. If you ever decide you want to really specialize, it can get more complicated but that's optional for future you. 

44 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

Post lots, guys.

 

I guess these are technically Lots guys

September 11 - 219.9

September 18 - 220.7

September 25 - 218.0

October 2 - 216.0

October 9 - 215.4

 

Good number for me. I hit 214.X the last couple of days so I tried to make sure I ate plenty over the weekend.

I adjusted my maintenance number from 222 down to 215.

So as to not bury the lead, COVID things appear fine. Laura tested positive on Wednesday. She tested because several other women in her section at he concert had tested positive. I also tested Wednesday after she had come in positive, I was negative. I cancelled my plans for the board game weekend because it seemed like a bad idea to show up and sit around a table with a bunch of people if I even might have covid.

By Friday morning Laura was feeling fine so we both tested and both came back negative. So I went ahead and trained. 

 

Thursday

Training

I was still playing things as if we were COVID positive so I took a long walk and came back and did a short bout of yoga. Basically a recovery day. 

 

Food

I went by Trader Joe's to get dough and sauce and made a couple pizzas for supper. 

 

Sleep

I got reliably good sleep over these few days. I'm figuring out a few things that seem to help me sleep. More on that latter. I do still have some room for improvement. I left my5:30 alarm on, hence the early wake up.

 

Friday

Training

Based on us both testing negative and both feeling good I went ahead and trained. I don't have specific notes on what we covered.

 

Food

Today was my "make up" for missing too much food. I made nachos. There are some hard rules when I make nachos that have to be followed. First, you have to use the whole bag. Now, I bought the smallest bag I could get but I had to use the whole thing. Not my fault, these are the rules. Also, you must use and entire block of cheese. Not my fault, those are the rules. I also used lot of veggies and a half pound of chorizo. Not an everyday food but I enjoyed it. 

 

Sleep

I meant to sleep in but I forgot my Whoop has an alarm built in and it went off. I'm supposed to be able to tap it to turn it off but it doesn't always take when I tap it. It took enough taps that I was awake. Boooo

 

 

Saturday

Training

Today I had hit up The Rec. I did a strength workout with machines only as I'm still protecting and having issues with my back. I knew I didn't need to do any cardio but I just kind of like a little light cardio after lifting. It feels good. So I did thirty minutes on the elliptical. Afterwards I did my stretching. Later I wrapped my my "training" by taking a lovely hour nap. 

 

Food

Food was nothing totally crazy. Over by thirteen calories is aas good as 0 as far as I'm concerned.

 

Sleep

Because it was the weekend I got a nice lie in.

 

 

 

Sunday

Training

Today was my first time wearing my Whoop for Akogi. I only got eleven rounds in before the professor there and I got to chatting so I called it. Whoop is shouting at me that I overtrained today. It's in for a ride.

 

Food

Because of the eleven hundred calories Whoop says I burned, I'm going in almost 500 calories under. I might grab some cottage cheese before bed so it'll probably 400 calories. 

Sleep

 

 

Cutting the recap there so I can head to bed soon. I'll do more of a kick off tomorrow. 

 

16 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I hope Covid leaves your house fast

13 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

Oh no! I hope you stay healthy and that Laura feels good soon

 

We're pretty good so far. My current working theory is that the "cold" I had last week that seemed to have come from the tournament was probably actually a very mild course of COVID and I unwittingly acted as a plague rat for two weeks. However, last weekend Laura sang in a huge chorale concert that she had been rehearsing for and those things are horrible plague vectors too. So maybe I still have it in my future. Laura seems to be on the tail end of her course of disease. She started to feel crumby the middle of last week but, again, we thought it was just a mild cold. 

 

I tested yesterday and came out negative. I'm going to go ahead and take my PTO today and tomorrow that I had planned for the games weekend but I cancel my part in the whiskey tasting tonight and the games weekend. I've kind of been feeling burnt out so I'm going to just take a few recharge days. Today (Thursday) I'm going to go get us some groceries to cover at least the weekend. Even though I'm testing negative, I'm not going to train at all today. I'll go for a walk, do some stretching at home, do some tidying up that I've been wanting to do. 

 

Tomorrow I will test in the morning. If I'm negative, I'll go ahead and start training again. If I test positive then I'll stay indoors all weekend and test again on Monday. Regardless, I'm making some pizza tonight and Nachos tomorrow. So it'll be kind of a "fun food" weekend with few obligations. I'm going to make a reasonable attempt to track calories but Nachos, for example, will be a pretty crude guess. I'd like to enjoy my food for the weekend but not totally fall off the wagon. This is what I think maintenance is about.

 

Wednesday

Training

Literally none. It feels like I've not done that in forever but I know I did it one day last week. I think it just feels different emotionally to know that there is training to do and I'm making and active choice to not do it. 

 

Food

My solution to food was to drop carbs first. I also dropped any protein supplementation. This translated to no protein bars or powders, dropping toast with apple butter from breakfast, and dropping bread from a hamburger in the afternoon so it was a patty on a plate. Obviously, with pizza on the docket tonight, today will be higher carb. I'll likely cut a few carbs from my midday but I'm not going to go keto-crazy. I'm not against the carbs, they're just an easy place to start. 

I did find myself quite hungry around bed time. I've been skipping my little cottage cheese snack before bed but I needed it last night. I assume this was merely an artifact of having 500 fewer calories to play with during the day.

 

Sleep

I was super tired last night. I tried to read and was almost immediately not able to focus and fell asleep before 9. However, because I'm me, this also means I woke up a little after 4 and was done sleeping. I gave it most of an hour to try and get back to sleep but no-go. So just got up around 5 because making coffee and zelda sounded better than laying in bed.

 

Mobility

No

 

Guitar

I got in one Grease the Groovy session and had a lesson (virtual on account of COVID) last night. My teacher encouraged the Grease the Groovy idea and we spent a fair amount of time on what "playing around" could look like. I also was given a new song Chitlins Con Carne which sounds loungy or like really good elevator music but is actually a 12 bar blues in disguise. 

 

 

Tuesday

Training

Strength 

Did all machine work. I need to figure out how I want to log these. 

 

Cardio

30 minutes Elliptical

I tried setting the machine to "target heart rate" of 70%. The machine struggled with this. It would get me a little below it and then it would start pushing up the difficulty but my heart didn't seem to respond how it wanted so it would push the difficulty very high and I would necessarily slow my pace because the resistance was so high. Then the program would go to pause and the resistance would drop to zero then it would detect my activity and unpause the program again. It was a mess. I need to not use that program. 

 

BJJ

Marathon Roll

It ended up being a pretty low intensity night.  Part of me was relieved, part was disappointed. Professor Ranch tried to be a little more esoteric and rather than just do rounds he wanted 3 minutes of one person getting their sweep of choice then roll then switch. Then we'd switch and he'd have a very nuanced change and people would just be confused. The cognitive load just slowed everyone down. So my HR didn't even hit 160. It's probably for the best given back-to-back days of marathon. It'll be interesting to see what the Whoop thinks when I finally do three days (Sunday, First Monday of the month, Tuesday). Right now it wants me to take a day off 

 

 

Food

Way underate for the day but that's expected on a Tuesday. Not a problem. I ate as much as I comfortably could given two workouts. The extra calories go in the bank for the gaming weekend. 

Sleep

I got a really good night's sleep for me. I tried something I think I've done before but it's been a long time. I set out my CBD gummies on my night stand but didn't take them until I had a full wake up moment. It seems like their sleep inducing capability, for me, runs out after 6 hours or so. So, not taking them until 11:30 or midnight seems to help me sleep better the second half of the night. 

Mobility

I did my ten minutes after cardio.

Guitar

I only got in one 5 minute Greasing the Groovy

Other

I found myself just sitting and staring at my computer this afternoon. I tried to refocus and do some work a couple of times. Eventually I decided there was only one thing for it. I turned off the lights and layed down and took a nap. I believe this was the right choice.

 

Other Other

Laura just tested positive for covid, like 30 minutes ago. So I'm taking a coupled days away from BJJ and skipping my gaming weekend. I haven't figured out my plan for the week at this point. I'll probably just take more walks and have a nice recovery half week. 

Welcome back! It sounds like the wheel of life has really kept turning for you but the overall trend seems positive. Keep it up. 

Welcome back rebel. Always glad to see a returning face.

Monday

Training

Marathon Monday - no gi

It started off well enough with a top-bottom-out from closed guard then switched to bottom-top-out. I lost my first round but won every round after that. Then I started running the mat on everyone I rolled with. Bradley (white) picked me out to roll and I was getting a tap every 30 seconds and having to dig deeper into my bag of tricks to find a submission I hadn't used. Then Ken(blue) called me out for a round and Professor, knowing I need to get out of bad pins, interceded and put Ken on top in side control and gave him instruction to not let me up and if I get up, then I go down again anyway. I spent 6 minutes trying to get out from under Ken and failed completely. Next round Professor assigned Reed to do the same. At least with him I was getting out once a minute or so. I wrapped with a round with Joe that I swear Professor was watching because the moment I got to starting my submission on Joe Professor called stop for the day. 

After class I screwed around with Chris (brown) but was so wiped out he was just stunting on me. That's the most tired I've been after one of these in over a year.

There's an interesting glitch in my data (in the spoiler tag). It appears I died briefly. Then a return to a slightly higher pulse ten minutes later. Pretty sure I was not dead for ten minutes. This was about the time that Ken was smashing me. The most reasonable hypothesis here is that the sensor lost contact with my skin and so it had no data. I pad my ego though by offerrng an alternative, much less likely, hypothesis. My theoretical maximum hear rate is 176, the top of the chart. I'd like to think that between getting smashed by 260-270 lbs and working as hard as possible my HR went above this number and the analysis counted it as an error and threw out the data. This is probably not true but I like the story of it. 

 

 

Food

I came into dinner with lots of spare calories, several hundred, including having accounted for dinner already but I was still hungry post supper. So I ate 50 grams of ice cream and 150 grams of cottage cheese. I suspect my calories were a bit under counted for the day given the 10 minute gap in my workout data. An online calculator estimates that the gap is ~150 calories (based on age, weight, 170 BPM, and 10 minutes). So maybe I had 50 left, maybe I had 200. good either way. 

Sleep

A good night's sleep for me.

 

Guitar

Structured Practice (Brown Eyed Girl): 30 minutes

Trying to learn to play the melody the song starts with. I can play along at 25% speed. I can sometimes keep up at 50% but a long way from full speed

Unstructured Practice: 5 minutes x1

Underperformed goal but I'll count it as a win for day 1 to get any.

Mobility

None

7 hours ago, Darciana said:

Is it cheating if I put Friday's weight because today's weight was the highest weight I've recorded since May? I had planned on using Friday weigh ins for the remainder of this challenge (plus bonus!) anyway so I guess not. But it feels like cheating.

I'm not keeping score. Do what works for you. Friday is fine.

I track min, max and average on my spreadsheet. I try to match like for like when I compare things but it really doesn't matter what that like thing is. 

On 9/30/2023 at 4:18 PM, Kishi said:

...that's much more comfortable and, dare I say, sustainable.

Big win here. There's no prize for getting to your weight first and there's a very high likelihood that if you're first down, you'll be the first back up.